The Top 15 Albums of 2010

Well, this is a bit later than I’d have liked, but I wound up writing way more than expected about each entry. Still, I hope you remain somewhat interested in reflecting on this past year in music, because this took a long, long time to put together. If you’ll recall, in my top songs list I mentioned that there’s no crossover between that list and this one. This holds true, but I stress that the rule only impacted the songs list, not the albums list. There is one bit of crossover though, where an album here is by an artist I gave props to on the songs list, for a song from a different 2010 release of theirs. Although this isn’t necessarily restricted by that rule, I still likely would have avoided it if that album wasn’t so stylistically different from this one.

I’m not going to include an “honorable mentions” list here, however, there are some albums that I couldn’t figure out a way to put on either list. I would distinguish this from an honorable mentions list because many of these I don’t actually feel like I could give a proper assessment of, and in some cases it might be on the list if I could (rather than not being on the list because it’s not good enough to be on it). Also, a true honorable mentions list for me would include many albums that I highlighted a song from instead. So anyway, here are my notable omissions:

How to Dress Well, Love Remains
This didn’t make my top albums list, but it came close. I wanted to put a song from it on the songs list to compensate, but ultimately just couldn’t really find one that I felt comfortable including on that list. But it is very good, and worth checking out.

Gorilliaz, Plastic Beach
My only previous exposure to Gorillaz was adoring the still-great “Clint Eastwood” in elementary school and just kind of ignoring the rest of that self-titled album. So I wasn’t as excited for Plastic Beach as everyone else I knew seemed to be, and I didn’t check it out when it was released. I recently decided to correct that error, and while I’ve actually found myself liking it a ton, it was just too late in the game to really think about it in terms of this list. My fault, yo.

Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest
I like Deerhunter and Bradford Cox quite a bit, but I just never was able to make a lot of time for this album, sadly. I’ve listened to it a couple of times, but not enough to have much of an opinion on the whole thing. So far, there are some parts I really, really enjoy, and some parts I may just need more time with. Still, I can’t really do anything about not being able to put it on a list at this point.

Sharon van Etten, Epic
Another one I only recently got into, although I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have made my top albums list. Still, had I been listening to this album for longer I likely would have made room for a song from it (probably “DsharpG”) in the other list.

Avey Tare, Down There
Although I’m an Animal Collective obsessive, I didn’t listen to this too much. I liked it from the few times I did listen to it, but I couldn’t help but find it to be a disappointment, mainly because Avey Tare is capable of so much more. Still, it’s not a bad album at all, and if it wasn’t coming so soon after Merriweather Post Pavilion I might have made more time for it, enough to at least find something worthy of the top songs list.

And finally, in a given year I obviously miss a whole lot of good music. These are some of the albums that I straight-up just never listened to, regrettably:

Beach House, Teen Dream
Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record
Caribou, Swim
Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles
Gil Scott-Heron, I’m New Here
Liars, Sisterworld
Local Natives, Gorilla Manor
No Age, Everything in Between
Owen Pallett, Heartland
The-Dream, Love King
Titus Andronicus, The Monitor

And now, here are my top fifteen albums of 2010. After each entry is an “audio collage” if you will, which contains around two minutes of clips from the album to give you a sense of whether it’s up your alley. Anyway, without further ado…

Back in August, we hadn’t heard a true album from Sufjan since 2005’s masterpiece Illinois. We’d heard outtakes, compilations of unofficially released Christmas-themed EPs, and experimental orchestral compositions, but not an actual follow-up. Then one day, there it was on his Bandcamp page – completely unannounced – an EP of brand new Sufjan songs.  An hour-long EP of brand new Sufjan songs. That’s longer than all but a few of the albums on this list. (Twice as long, in some cases.) It was tough to know what to make of it at first, and as the dust settled, some people decided that they didn’t like it. But despite the mixed reviews, I’ve found All Delighted People to a rewarding release, and in many ways what I wish Age of Adz, his actual album that was released two months later, had been. The EP is held together by two versions of the title track, both around ten minutes long. They each start modestly, but eventually soar to great, idiosyncratic heights in a surge of booming instrumentation. The closing track, “Djohariah,” is seventeen minutes long, a length that bothered the same people eventually turned off by “Impossible Soul,” the even longer final track on Age of Adz. It doesn’t add up to as much as “Soul,” but is respectable in its boldness. Aside from the title, which is chanted in a tremendous gush of human voice, no actual words are sung until twelve minutes in, and then Sufjan stuffs about four hundred of them into the final five minutes. The other songs, despite not taking place on as grand a scale as those three, are hardly duds. “Heirloom” and “Enchanted Ghosts” are primo-Sufjan, and “The Owl and the Tanager” is one of the best songs in his discography. The lyrics to it are the kind you can’t quite parse definitive meaning out of, but that are deeply affecting anyway. “From the Mouth of Gabriel” is the only song here I could do without, but it’s at least notable for pointing the way (not that we noticed) to the type of experimentation he would indulge on Age of Adz. And even if I was disappointed by that eventual release, I still take great pleasure out of this EP, which shows Sufjan sitting comfortably in his usual terrain, but still restless enough that he needs to spread his arms.

Choice tracks: “All Delighted People” (“Original” and “Classic Rock” versions), “The Owl and the Tanager”

The Scissor Sisters’ third album, the first in four long years, is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be any good. Their self-titled debut release was a terrific glam-rock/disco hybrid, the rare album that works as a throwback and as a terrific set of songs in its own right. But it didn’t exactly herald a band that would last the ages. The Scissor Sisters were burning bright, but in the way that usually burns out sooner than later. Their second album, Ta-Dah, seemed to confirm this direction. It had their best song (“I Don’t Feel Like Dancing”), but was more uneven and simply lacked the impact. And this year I was ready to have to dismiss Night Work, as much as it would pain me to do so. But fortunately, no such dismissal is required. The band succeeds with Night Work largely because they don’t attempt a repeat but also avoids some hollow plea to be taken seriously as artists. Instead, this album works because it’s drenched in atmosphere, meant to emulate the sort of skeazy nightclub environment the band loves. It helps that the band is working with a strong set of songs. They start things on high note (because, well, it wouldn’t be a Scissor Sisters album otherwise) with the title track, but the quality doesn’t subside as it moves along. Rather, it simply grows more experimental, but also more endearing. Behold the final three songs, starting with a bitter ode to self-destructive sex, then swinging to an album-, perhaps artist-defining anthem about the thrill of giving your body away to the fulfilling self-destructiveness of nightlife culture. Finally, the album closes with “Invisible Light,” a musically ambitious track that climaxes in a spoken-word segment from none other than Sir Ian McKellan. Like the rest of Night Work, it’s sounds fresh and weirdly innovative. That’s a description I never thought I’d bestow upon The Scissor Sisters, but I am immensely happy to do so.

Choice tracks: “Sex and Violence,” “Night Work,” “Night Life”

Glasser’s first release was 2009’s Apply EP, which contained three original tracks and three remixes of them by artists like John Talabot and Tanlines (and later with additional digital-only remixes by Delorean, YACHT, and others). The promising EP was composed entirely by Cameron Mesirow using GarageBand. For her full-length debut, she worked with producer Ariel Rechtshaid to bring out the most in the songs, breathing air into the arrangements. “Apply” and “Glad” are the two holdovers from the EP, and the newer recordings are unquestionably superior. They are given new dimensions here, coursing with an energy and liveliness denied them on the comparatively flatter original compositions. And the new songs match these two in every way. The highlight is “Home,” a track about the emotional framework of a relationship falling apart. The layers of Mesirow’s voice shouting “home” in the chorus is pure spectacle. Throughout Ring, Mesirow uses quiet, instrumentally minimalist endings to lay each song to rest while clearing the field for the next one. In particular, the way the final song ends with a distorted version of “Apply”’s opening percussion gives the album a subtle circular quality, making it feel like a complete whole in a way that no individual piece quite does. That’s where Ring draws its title from, because in its in full state, it’s nothing short of a thing of beauty.

Choice tracks: “Home,” “Apply,” “Plane Temp”

Das Racist (“Das” like “that’s”) emerged last year with the single “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell” (link goes to the excellent wallpaper. remix), which was either completely brilliant or completely stupid, depending on who you asked. And even fans of the song, such as me, were pretty confident that Das Racist would not really be a band worth looking out for. Well, I think both sides gladly ate their words this year. First with the good Shut Up, Dude mixtape and then the great Sit Down, Man, Das Racist were one of the most interesting hip hop acts of the year. Das Racist act as cultural, social, and music critics, splicing clever pop culture references with cutting societal observations. But the mixtape doesn’t really get off to a good start, with most of the first four songs sounding flat production-wise. Every time I’ve listened to the album, I spend the first fifth growing increasingly bored, with the exception of the standout “hahahaha jk,” which includes a summation of Das Racist’s entire attitude: “We’re not joking/Just joking, we are joking/Just joking, we’re not joking.” But Das Racist enlisted an impressive roster of producers, and “Commercial” is where this recruitment starts to pay off. It has fun, colorful production, and that level of craftsmanship maintains itself for most subsequent tracks. The peak comes with “Amazing,” produced by Brooklyn band Keepaway (who got mentioned in my top songs list), who make the entire song sound like it’s floating on a glittery cloud. (Weirdly, the two artists’ collaboration on Keepaway’s Kompetitor EP is mediocre.) Das Racist, of course, match the production on the album at every turn. Their references are funny (including ones to the two pillars of ’90s comedy: “Choo-choo-choose to be half-Lisa Simpson, half-Ralphie”; “Haters mad ‘cause they got Costanza dicks”), but they also allow Das Racist to increase the depths of their own characterization. In “Amazing,” they drop a reference to the Bible, of all things (“Wait, are you able to/Give of the flesh like Abel do?/Not able?/Cain’ll do”). But their cultural critiques are just as impressive, mocking the free-[Insert Artist Here] movements (“But free Weezy too though and Max B too yo/Free the whole prison system, what they did to you, bro?”), the fashion industry (“I’m at the fashion party, I’m wearing fashion clothes/I’m putting fashionable powders up inside my nose”), and racism (“Older white women say I’m very articulate”). Sit Down, Man is a bold announcement of vision and skill, and put Das Racist in a position to become one of the most vital artists today.

Choice tracks: “Amazing,” “Rapping to You,” “hahahaha jk”

ceo, aka Eric Berglund, is familiar to music fans as one half of the great Tough Alliance, the band that started the Sincerely Yours label in Sweden. His debut as a solo artist started cryptically, like most things Sincerely Yours-related, but this time with an added dose of possible mental illness. (Some highlights from the initial press release: “ceo is the photosynthesis and a an aria [sic], it is silence and virginity lost in a gang bang”; “ceo is raspberries and chlamydia [sic], it is the shadow and it is a clapping game”; “ceo is the ashanti [sic] and ceo is seinfeld [sic].” Really, the whole thing’s amazing, especially because there’s a 90% chance it is not a joke.) But if ceo was a failure, it would have been the first Eric Berglund project to have that distinction. And thankfully it does not. Berglund remains as great a songwriter as he ever was, and songs like “Illuminata” and “No Mercy” display a flair for melody few possess. On “Come with Me” he sings of wanting to escape with a person he loves, while simultaneously crafting the perfect song for them to escape into. I hope to hell The Tough Alliance isn’t over, as increasingly feels likely, but I won’t be heartbroken if it is as long as Berglund keeps releasing music on par with White Magic.

Choice tracks: “No Mercy,” “Come with Me,” “Illuminata”

Highlife (aka Sleepy Doug Shaw), named after a popular African style of music (and apparently emulating it as well, although I’ve never personally listened to any highlife), released this EP at the end of September, and I was blown away when I heard it. Not by the first track, which is good, but slight due to its length (less than a minute). No, it was when I got to the second track, “F Kenya RIP,” that I knew I was listening to something great. It essentially repeats the same melodic hook for nearly six minutes, but it seems to grow more and more candescent as it moves along. The song is exuberant and captivating, aided by the busy but not distracting production. The next two songs smartly don’t try to emulate it, but they use similar techniques to create something just as grand. The fourth one, “Tuareg Dancehall” is more relaxed than what precedes it but exquisite anyway. It’s the rare song that captures the spirit and emotion of dancing without actually being a dance track. I find it impossible not to be moved by Highlife’s music, and of all the new artists that emerged this year, he’s the one I will be most excited about watching in 2011.

Choice tracks: “F Kenya RIP,” “Tuareg Dancehall”

Wavves’ 2009 album, Wavvves, was adored by some and criticized by others for being lo-fi at its most murky. And if it wasn’t obvious then that these critics were writing it off too quickly, the band’s follow-up, King of the Beach, should answer that definitively. It cleans up the production considerably, but it beefs up the songwriting just as much. Nathan Williams’ lyrics are simple, but by no means bad. The way they document his thoughts seems almost refreshingly spare, focusing on his feelings about weed, love, and himself. Williams is almost unapologetically a brat, and his lyrics convey this with accuracy and surprising charm. But it’s his songwriting that impresses the most here, the sound of a kid who grew up on the mainstream pop-punk of Blink-182 (of which he is an unabashed fan, and I promise, that’s only one of the reasons I love him so much) trying his hand at actual punk. And the result is punk, at its catchiest and most blissfully meaningless. When he pouts, “My own friends hate me/But I don’t give a shit,” he couldn’t sound more likable.

Choice tracks: “Baby Say Goodbye,” “Post Acid,” “King of the Beach”

Reverb. Echoes. Distorted vocal loops. It’s amazing that with the presence of those elements rarely heard in the music of Neil Young, what’s most notable about the legendary musician’s latest album is what’s missing – namely, every instrument except an electric guitar and his voice, two amazing tools that haven’t lost their haunting power with time. But what’s more surprising is that, for the first time in sixteen years, Neil Young has recorded a great album. He had some strong albums in the 2000s, and even a few great songs, but 1994’s Sleeps with Angels was the last time he released something this consistent and noteworthy. It’s tough to say for sure if “Neil’s back for good,” but it’s a relief that he returned at all. The uptick in quality is immediately noticeable on the opener, “Walk with Me.” About the pleasure of heading into old age with a loved one, it’s one of the most hard-hitting rock songs he’s recorded in a long time. In “Love and War,” he tackles the grand subjects of his career (you know, besides cars), yet confesses, “When I sing about love and war/I don’t really know what I’m saying.” On “Hitchhiker,” one of the first looks fans got of the album, he chronicles the highs and lows of his entire career, while encapsulating the musical style of the album. He recounts the drugs, the paranoia, the lost loves, and, because it wouldn’t be Young otherwise, the Aztecs. “Peaceful Boulevard” is the most traditionally Young-esque song on here. He trades an electric guitar for an acoustic, and, in a vocal performance proving that yeah, he still has that voice, details the way devastation results in massive change, starting with the first European settlers in North America and ending in present day. Though heavy-handed at times (particularly the final verse), it’s still breathtaking in its sweep. I had come to wonder recently if Neil, my favorite artist of all time, would ever do something surprising and great again. Le Noise gives the assuring answer that, as he sings in “Sign of Love,” “When we both have silver hair and a little less time,” well, “there still are roses on the vine.”

Choice tracks: “Walk with Me,” “Hitchhiker,” “Peaceful Valley Boulevard”

Janelle Monáe’s first full-length album, The ArchAndroid, came out in May, but its weight has been felt deep into the winter. It’s an incredible exercise in genre hopping, very few songs being cut from the same cloth. The album is split into two suites, the second and third in a thematically-linked series about an android named Cindi Mayweather that started with Monáe’s 2007 EP Metropolis. The second suite comprises the first thirty-seven minutes of the album, and it’s the stronger of the two. It starts well with “Dance or Die” (the second track after an overture), which features poet Saul Williams, but then the album just lets loose. In the span of seventeen minutes, we get “Faster,” “Locked Inside,” “Cold War,” and “Tightrope.” (The comparatively slight, but still good, “Sir Greendown” sits in the middle of the four songs.) These are probably the best straight seventeen minutes of music on any album this year outside of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s an incomparable rush of creativity and energy. And it’s a marvel that “Faster” and “Locked Inside,” which easily could have been the best moments on many other albums, get their asses handed to them by “Cold War” and “Tightrope,” a one-two punch that tops last year’s best one-two punch, Phoenix’s “Lisztomania” and “1901.” “Cold War” is a rush of energy and force, as Monáe sings subtly scary lines like “I’m trying to find my peace/I was made to believe there’s something wrong with me.” “Tightrope,” which guests Big Boi, is an awesome mix of funk and hip hop about the necessity of artistic perseverance.

But the album doesn’t slide into irrelevance after this stretch. The rest of the first suite is still strong, with standouts like “Oh, Maker” and “Come Alive (War of the Roses).” The second suite, a shorter thirty minutes, sees Monáe trying on less accessible genres, but still emerging with a great song more often than not. “57821,” which features Deep Cotton, is a slow, lilting track that’s one of the best on the album. “Wondaland” is one of the weirder stylistic exercises, but is strangely effective. The ArchAndroid isn’t entirely consistent (I can’t for the life of me figure out how Kevin Barnes was essentially allowed to sneak an Of Montreal song onto here in “Make the Bus”), because that would be almost impossible for an album of its scope and length. But it’s a triumph anyway, and while it may not work as a whole quite as well as Sleigh Bells’ Treats, to me Janelle Monáe is the most promising breakthrough artist of the year.

Choice tracks: “Tightrope (feat. Big Boi), “Cold War,” “57821 (feat. Deep Cotton)”

Barcelona-based group Delorean seemingly came out of nowhere last year with the Ayrton Senna EP (which made my top-10 list last year), although in fact they had been releasing music since 2004. Ayrton Senna was a glorious collection of sunny, ecstatic dance music, particularly the single “Seasun” and the even better “Deli.” Their first full-length album following the breakthrough, Subiza, naturally had a lot of expectation built up for it, and when it finally came out, shrugs of disappointment could be heard from a few fans. True, these songs don’t feel like as much of a radiant eruption as the ones on Senna, but as it turns out, that’s not really a flaw. Instead, the songs here are more like particularly sunny soundscapes, less immediately rewarding but no less remarkable. They lay blissful melodies over spirited compositions, of which the most distinguishing element may be that the human voice appears to play a role in each one (although sometimes it’s so distorted that it’s hard to be sure). Every track is a winner, which is why claims that the album is frontloaded ring of laziness to me. My personal favorite is the exact middle track, “Simple Graces,” which could have been as much of a summer anthem as “Seasun” if people were paying attention. I was enormously excited for this album, and as far as I’m concerned, my excitement proved completely deserving.

Choice tracks: “Simple Graces,” “Warmer Places,” and “Real Love”

On this, the third Los Campesinos! album, the jubilant sound of their first two releases continues its descent into something darker and reaches its apex. Gareth Campesinos! (for those unfamiliar with the band, each member uses Campesinos! as a surname) has developed into a lyricist capable of purging his emotions in devastating ways while maintaining the pure cleverness that he practically flaunted on the group’s still-amazing debut, Hold on Now, Youngster. There, even the album’s weakest song could have possibly its best line (as in, “Since we became accelerated readers we never leave the house”). On Romance, Gareth sorts through the baggage of his past relationships (not unusual), but often with a ferocity heretofore unseen in him. In “Straight in a 101,” he knocks off one of the best lines of the year with “I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock,” but immediately follows it with an explicit condemnation of his ex-girlfriend’s tendency to stimulate him but “never get me off” (or, later on, “never touch my cock”). And the song ends with vicious self-deprecation as Gareth comes to the realization of just how little his petty romantic disasters really matter. When he shifts through the pieces of a woman’s misery (probably another ex-girlfriend) on “The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future,” what could be a listless dirge is instead undeniably moving because, well, he earned it.

And also because the music itself is great. It’s a step up from the previous Campesinos! release, the short We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, which was often brilliant but also uneven. The songs are simply fuller this time, implementing the sensational turbulence that they once used at their most fun to create something abrasive, intense, and visceral. They resist anything as joyfully anthemic as “Death to Los Campesinos!” or “You! Me! Dancing!”  Instead, they allow the bigger moments on the record to become piercingly poignant. It’s the sound of a band evolving, not letting any one technique define them but maintaining a consistency in style and vision. It was already easy to love Los Campesinos!, but Romance with Boring made it even easier.

Choice tracks: “The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future,” “Romance Is Boring,” “Straight in at 101”

When mixing songs, careful attention must be paid to the noise level. In any mixing program, the color red is used to mark the point where the sounds get too loud and will likely start to bleed together, diminishing the quality of the recording. Sleigh Bells gleefully gives this rule the middle finger. Their aesthetic is all red, all the time, letting the production bleed so far into the danger zone that it feels like being punched in the face.

Sleigh Bells is a duo, comprised of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss. Miller used to be a member of hardcore band Poison the Well, while Krauss was in a girl group Rubyblue that never got off the ground. And though it’s a simplification, imagining a fusion of those two genres should give you a rough idea of what the band’s up to. Miller writes the songs and develops the beats, a mix of well-worn guitar hooks with blasted drums, all executed as violently as possible. Krauss is the vocalist, and her girly voice, equally capable of charming “ohs” and ear-deafening screams, is an ideal complement to the production. She makes every song her own, managing to sell bizarre lyrics like “You form a tarot pack and I’m aware of that/But we could fistfight drunk like The Parent Trap” and “Got my A machines on the table/Got my B machines in the drawer” (which are the only two lines in “A/B Machines”). The fusion of these two styles allows songs like “Tell ‘Em” and “Crown on the Ground” to form an almost hallucinatory orgy of noise.

But for any who question their actual talent, given that their music is founded on what is admittedly a gimmick, “Rill Rill” should put those fears to doubt. Though the production technique remains similar to the rest of the album, ignoring intricate mixing and letting sounds blend together, and the effect is reminiscent of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound production. It isn’t a rush of noise so much as a smooth-as-silk pop song, with Krauss’ voice at its most effervescent, singing hazy lines about braces, telephones, and “new trends.” The song functions both as a necessary peaceful respite from the chaos of the rest of the album, and also as a helpful hint for where Sleigh Bells might take their music in the future. While I highly doubt they’re heading towards an album of completely “Rill Rill”-esque songs, it answers definitively that no, they don’t have to do loud to do great. But for now, it’s just more fun that way.

Choice tracks: “Rill Rill,” “Crown on the Ground,” “Tell ‘Em”

James Murphy has been doing this for a while. Hell, he made that clear on LCD Soundsystem’s first single, “Losing My Edge,” which came out in 2002. If he was already a veteran then, God knows what he is now. Over the past decade, Murphy has been using LCD Soundsystem as a means to explore the potential of electronic music to delight, inspire, and unite. Since 2002, the project has had its highs, and, well, higher highs. Their debut album, which came out in 2005, featured two discs, one of new material and one of previously released singles. It was justly acclaimed, particularly for its standout tracks like “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” “Tribulations,” and the aforementioned “Losing My Edge.”  Their 2007 follow-up, Sound of Silver, was even more rapturously received, particularly for “All My Friends,” which was one of the defining songs of the decade. But in 2010, Murphy seems ready to hang up the LCD Soundsystem project, at least in its current incarnation as a big band with massive tours and an intense pressure to create good music. And with This Is Happening, the band’s third and purported final album, Murphy has let LCD Soundsystem bid farewell at the top of its game.

This Is Happening opens with the second-longest song on the album, “Dance Yrself Clean.” The mix is surprisingly quiet, and one can be forgiven for turning the speakers up to hear the vocals better, backed by a percussive beat and a catchy synth loop. The song takes a while to rev up, but when it finally gets loud, it makes for an awesome moment. The second song, which was also the first single, is the deliriously stupid “Drunk Girls.” It is structured essentially as a series of alleged facts about drunk girls and boys (drunk girls, apparently, “get invitations from nations,” “like to file complaints,” and “wait an hour to pee,” while drunk boys “steal from the cupboards” and “walk like pedestrians”), but it reaches a strangely moving note as Murphy starts to show his age. Without casting aspersions on it, he demonstrates his distance from this lifestyle with a desperate attempt to defend his behavior, followed by a proclamation of his belief in “waking up together,” “making up,” and honesty. Only Murphy could write a four-minute pop song so seemingly stupid at first, but then turn it into something profound.

Elsewhere, he engages in his signature music-as-music-criticism with “You Wanted a Hit” (“You wanted the time/But maybe I can’t do time/Oh, we both know that’s an awful line/But it doesn’t make it wrong”), bemoans his inability to objectively perceive conflict in relationships on “Pow Pow,” romanticizes the idea of friends and family as an emotional center in the face of hardship on “Home,” and on the standout “I Can Change,” pledges to change so he can prolong a relationship clearly on its last legs. It’s probably the most traditionally pretty song on the record, one that showcases Murphy’s splendid falsetto. But the true peak comes with “All I Want,” the fourth song, which might be my favorite song in LCD Soundsystem’s catalogue. Murphy describes the bleak scenario of returning home one day to find your partner has abandoned you due to neglect, and the onslaught of depression and longing it causes. The song is produced tremendously, with the vocals mixed slightly below the music in a way that allows the melody to be dazzling but subtle. The instrumentation grows more and more mesmerizing as the song pushes forward, and the final series of pleas to “take me home” are a painful but emotional release. Like I said before, if this is the last LCD Soundsystem album, James Murphy has led the project to a perfect conclusion.

Choice tracks: “All I Want,” “I Can Change,” “Home”

Starting in June, Swedish star Robyn began the Body Talk series, a planned three mini-albums that would roll out over the course of 2010. The first two came out in a timely fashion, each containing eight songs, and they garnered strong reviews. But when it came time to end the series in late November, rather than release a new mini-album, she decided to release a full album called Body Talk (not fashioned to any qualifier like “Part 3,” as the first two releases were), a single disc containing five songs each from parts one and two and five new songs. The hour-long Body Talk stands as a summation of Robyn’s music from the past year, and, despite some unfortunate omissions (namely the great “Cry When You Get Older” from Part 1), is a glorious artifact of her mastery of pop music.

It’s been written many times that Robyn’s absence from mainstream American radio is an injustice, and it couldn’t be truer. She and collaborator Klas Åhlund have a deft understanding of pop songwriting, both in structure and melody. These songs are as accessible as anything at the top of the charts, yet, for the most part, infinitely superior. What makes Robyn’s music so strong, despite an undeniable relation to mainstream pop, is its pure originality. These songs have a perspective and style missing in the manufactured world of most popular music, and it allows them to flourish. To listen to Body Talk is to hear fifteen songs that could be #1 hits for countless artists, yet are so much better for being bound to Robyn and Åhlund’s sense of musicianship.

But no one today besides Robyn and Åhlund could sit down and write this many exceptional pop songs on one album. The level of pure catchiness is off the charts. Robyn also understands the secret to pop music lyrics, weaving simple lines to create a sentiment easy to understand but emotionally sincere and affecting, be it the anguish of heartbreak or the incomparable joy of dancing. The beats on the album are uniformly terrific, thanks to Åhlund and guest producers like Diplo, Max Martin, Shelbcak, and Kleerup. Body Talk is just pure pop perfection. Individually or taken together, the songs on it are just some of the most thrilling and blissful music released this year.

Choice tracks: “Call Your Girlfriend,” “Dancing on My Own,” “Hang with Me,” “Stars 4-Ever”

I don’t really want to get too heavily into the Kanye myth here, in part because I already did that, and in part because everyone else has done so more than adequately. But to summarize: ego Twitter genius moving painting SNL G.O.O.D. Fridays Matt Lauer VMAs (2009 and 2010 versions) dick photo ballerinas #itsaprocess. Did I get everything? I hope so, because although I found all of that entertaining (and at times fascinating), they have little to do with this album taking the top slot here.

Simply, no other album pushed as hard as this one. No other artist tried to do as much as Kanye did with Fantasy, and if they had, they couldn’t have dreamed of succeeding so fully. Kanye’s goal in life is nothing short of trying to be the greatest artist of all time, and this album is a statement that even if that goal is impossible, he’s not gonna half-ass trying to achieve it.

No two songs on Fantasy are alike. The album begins with “Dark Fantasy,” which is as fitting an opening as could be. It pinballs from medieval-sounding narration by Nicki Minaj to a hook lifted (but deeply improved) from Mike Oldfield’s “In Higher Places,” to two strong verses by West to indie folk singer Bon Iver singing a verse through Auto-Tune, despite possessing a great voice, and finally to a cascading wall of voices singing the hook. The structure makes no sense, and might even be completely insane, but it comes together impeccably. On the second song “Gorgeous,” his flow is fiercer than elsewhere on the album as he raps about institutional racism and the criticisms people aim at him. (On comparisons to The Beatles: “What’s a black Beatle anyway, a fucking roach?”)

Then there’s “Power,” an anthem of earth-shattering proportions. Working with a killer sample from King Crimson’s “21^st Century Schizoid Man,” West delivers one amazing moment after another, simultaneously allowing this song to be self-mythologizing and the reason for the self-mythologizing. Right from the start he treats himself like a superhero, calling the song his “theme music” and facetiously stating in the chorus, “No one man should have all that power.” He goes on to bait SNL (on which he performed this song), insult the institutions of a “white-man world,” display awareness of his ego one second and praise how “fucking gifted” he is the next, and brag about driving while intoxicated. It’s an explosion of personality, braggadocio, pomposity, and genius that no other artist today could manage, and it works amazingly.

“Power” defines the album for me, but that doesn’t mean Fantasy is even remotely short of similarly brilliant moments. On “All of the Lights” he enlists eleven different artist, including Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Elton John, and Fergie, to create the most forcefully poppy song on the record. On “Devil with a New Dress,” he delivers two excellent verses before letting the beat stand out alone for a bit as it slowly morphs, building to a verse by Rick Ross that could have the worst lyrics in the world (though it doesn’t), but simply sounds great the way it mixes with the production. “Blame Game” is one of the most emotional tracks on the record, as West and John Legend spin a moving story about a relationship decaying into hatred and betrayal. It ends with what many consider the album’s most questionable moment, a two-minute sketch with Chris Rock praising his girlfriend’s renewed sexual energy and abilities, which she credits Kanye for. Although I admit the album would probably be better without it, I like it because, well, it actually is a little funny (mostly when Rock describes his plans to thank Kanye), but primarily because the way it meshes with the production just works so well. It sounds great, even if it may not be that great at all.

But the album’s biggest triumph is the single “Runaway.” It starts with spare piano notes, taking a leisurely forty seconds before a true beat finally emerges. Kanye sings on this one, recalling his underrated 2008 album 808s and Heartbreaks, but this time he eschews Auto-Tune and lets his uneven but emotive voice carry the song by its fragile self. In the lyrics, he stops trying to defend himself from the media’s criticisms of his character and concedes that maybe he does resemble the image they paint of him. He sympathizes with the women in his life who “[put] up with my shit just way too long.” In the chorus, he toasts to douchebags, assholes, scumbags, and jerkoffs, and acknowledges that he is one when he tells a woman to run away from him for her own sake. Pusha T does the only rapping on the track in a purposefully superficial and casually misogynistic verse meant to embody the faux-celebration of douchiness. Eventually the song proper ends, but rather than finish it at just under six minutes like the single version, Kanye does something else. He starts singing into a vocoder, letting it distort his voice to the point where it no longer even sounds like it emanates from a real human being. He proceeds to hum and sing, mostly unintelligibly, producing a soothing yet haunting effect  It goes on for three minutes, allowing the song to clock in at just over nine minutes total, and it’s absolutely mesmerizing. It’s one of the most unusual but gorgeous things I’ve ever heard on an album, and I am certain that no one else in the industry would have tried or even thought to attempt anything like it.

“Lost in the World,” the final song, samples and increases the tempo of Bon Iver’s “Woods,” a lovely, heavily Auto-Tuned track from his Blood Bank EP. The production builds gracefully before the beat enters and Bon Iver’s slow, tender voice seamlessly becomes the focus of a propulsive, infectious track. Kanye delivers a verse about getting lost in the moment with a woman he has conflicting feelings for, and afterwards slowly adds layers and layers to the production, until Bon Iver’s quiet song about escaping the tumultuousness of life becomes something huge, loud, and in every way transcendent. It’s an effect similar to the entire record: West, almost as a challenge, takes elements that shouldn’t work, whether it be the soaring chant of the hook to “Dark Fantasy,” a minute-long Elton John paino-based interlude, a verse from widely-hated rapper Rick Ross or the questionably talented Fergie, the tremendous voice of Bon Iver filtered through Auto-Tune, his comparatively weaker voice not filtered through Auto-Tune in a nine-minute song about self-hatred that climaxes with three minutes of distorted, mumbled vocals, or a rant by a young Gil Scott-Heron, and works it into a musical fabric in a way that adds up to something stylistically schizophrenic, emotionally draining, unfailingly ribald, stunningly ambitious, and, in the end, truly wonderful.

Choice tracks: “Runaway (feat. Pusha T),” “Power,” “Lost in the World,” “Devil in a New Dress (feat. Rick Ross)”