Interestinthings Law, Startups, Music; maybe in that order

Top Albums of 2010

I try to do a Top Tracks post every year, but this time I'm going to try something slightly different. As much as I wonder whether albums make sense anymore, it's still how the bulk of music is released, and many of my favorite artists choose to bundle their tracks this way. So I end up buying and loving albums in spite of myself, and my top tracks can easily get dominated by a few grade-A albums. This was a particularly good year for albums, and I'm feeling the need to split them out on their own, which will let me focus on standout standalones in a separate top tracks post. Rather than try to rank them, it makes more sense to me to list them chronologically through the year; a really good album is so full of goodness that it monopolizes your listening for a least a month, so a list like this tells a certain story of the year for me:

Vampire Weekend - Contra
I really wanted this album to be great, and I wasn't the least bit disappointed. I loved their debut album without reservation, but it would have been so disappointing to have that be all there was. Instead, like the Strokes before them, they came with a follow up that presses all the same buttons but makes you love it even more. It's wittier, prettier, and happier all the way around. This album is a fixer; it can rescue you from bad moods and bad tempers, chasing away worldly concerns in the way all the best music does.

Francis and the Lights - It'll Be Better
In some sense this was a year of Francis for me. I had never heard of him at the start of it, but Arthur was kind enough to put me on to the albums, EPs, and shows, and I ate them all up with a spoon. This album is definitely a mainstreaming effort; he is writing simpler songs to appeal to a wider audience, without question. That seems to have left some of his fans cold, but there's room in my heart for Francis to go pop. He's already pushing such a Bright Lights, Big City / Less Than Zero aesthetic that pop seems like part of the point; singing over heavy synths while wearing sunglasses with just can't be underground. This album is the best album that Phil Collins never made, and I love it for that.

Mux Mool - Skulltaste
I've been checking for more from this guy ever since I heard "Night Court" on the Ghostly Swim compilation. That one's a world-class thumper (diminished only slightly by use as the intro music for the GDGT podcast), and this album keeps up the pace. It's a slow, deliberate pace, but it's undeniably forceful, like a tank rolling down 5th avenue; you can't ignore it, and you damn sure can't stop it.

Javelin - No Más
In some ways this album is the opposite of Skulltaste; instead of darkness and lasers, it brings sunshine and horns to the neighborhood block party. The helium-hopped freaktalk of "Oh Centra" might be the oddest thing you hear this year, but just try to stifle a smile all the way through it, and if you can't find joy in the deranged steeldrums on "C Town", well then God, Jed, I don't even want to know you.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
I'm a little hesitant about this one, but I think only because I might not love it quite as much as everyone else calling it Album of the Year. That said, I can't pretend I didn't listen the hell out of it; the songs are full of surprises and some are just impeccably constructed. Plus The Wilderness Downtown is at least runner-up for Video of the Year (competing with Sour's Mirror).

Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
Truly saving the best for last. "Fuck You" is a triumph by any estimation (even Gwyneth Paltrow can't hurt it), and it's barely first among equals here; he absolutely murders Band of Horses's "No One's Gonna Love You", for one. Now, I've been a Cee Lo fan since the days of Goodie Mob, and I celebrate his entire catalog, but if you had asked me what he needed to do on his next album, I would have said get back to the rappin'. The Soul Machine had its bright spots, but there was a distinctive undercurrent of weak-sauce neo-soul, and then Gnarls Barkley ran out of ideas but still put out that second album. So I thought it would be nice to be reminded of Mr. Green's ability to spit hot fire 8 bars at a time. Instead he went all in on the soul tip, and he pulled it off brilliantly. The arrangements are all gorgeous, and if there are points where Cee Lo's voice doesn't quite seem like it's up to the task at hand, he still pulls it off, just because he's got it like that. I still want him to rap a bit, but if he can keep making albums like this, then he shouldn't be giving a shit about what I think.

There may or may not be an Amazon widget with all these albums right here, depending on what Wordpress decides to do today. In any case, Top Tracks not on any of these albums coming in a couple of days...

Why Albums?

An album of music is a hefty thing nowadays. It lasts longer than a subway ride, which has started to feel like an awfully long time for something to take. The album form is also weighed down with notions and expectations acquired from over 40 years as the dominant distribution format for music. Because it hit an economic sweet spot between price and quantity for consumers when one had to schlep to a store to get it, it was relieved from any other justifications for its existence. Simply put, we needed 10+ songs to make it worth the trip. Apparently, we didn't really need those songs to form a cohesive narrative, and since the advent of CDs, they haven't even really needed to sound good together in sequence. Hell, they don't even have to all be good songs; they just have to add up to sufficient aggregate goodness to make the whole bundle worth purchasing. To be clear, I'm not claiming that going to the record store was anything difficult or onerous; it was and probably remains a whole bunch of fun, a great thing to do on a Saturday. However, it was still a thing to do; it had to go on your mental to-do list if you wanted to get music as it came out rather than when you passed by a store and had time to drop in.

Now we live in a brave and bold future where the music comes to us through the tubes of lights and sparks. No longer does one even have to schlep to the wallet by the door to get one's credit card, much less to a record store out in the world. My music service of choice has my credit card info ready to charge whenever I click on the Buy button (and then click something else, thanks to Amazon). So now purchasing music need not be a trip, or an event, or really any sort of undertaking at all. If the undertaking of the trip to the store used to set a practical floor on how much music you needed to get a customer to pursue a transaction, then there's a lot of room (i.e. money) below that floor, and the album needs a new reason to exist.

Why does a band need to wait until they've got 10 new songs recorded to release any of them, and why do I have to buy them all at once? The true and correct answers are they don't and I don't. They may, and I may, certainly, but I don't see why either is required now. I don't buy the argument that the songs need to be packaged into something that can be promoted as more of a periodic event; I just don't think that's going to be a successful marketing tactic going forward. Package away, but you'd better have 10 great songs if you want me to buy them all, and if they are all actually great, I bet you would have made more money doling them out to me piecemeal over time. I think the transaction costs have gotten low enough that it might be easier to get me to spend $1 ten times than $10 once, and even if we're not all the way there yet, I think there's a lot more opportunity for engagement with your fans in the former path, which will drive more ticket/merchandise sales in the end.

Now I'm (almost) as big a fan as anyone of concept albums, rock operas, whole-album covers and other such things that might have their own reason to still be an album. If a musician wants to put together a meticulously arranged 10-song cycle, then by all means sell it as such, and I'll buy it if it seems sufficiently excellent, though I'd strongly suggest a Lala-esque first-listen-free scheme to get people over the purchasing hump. All I'm arguing against here is the packaging of music in album form because that's how we've "always" done it. Not just because people are cheap and want to buy singles, or because many albums are padded with filler, but because it's simply unnecessary and no longer provides any guarantee of return. It's just a straitjacket, and it's not helping anybody.

Top Tracks of 2009

I've done one of these every year over the past few, but this year it just wasn't getting done, so I decided that I'd have to just write whatever I could while I was actually listening to each song. The thoughts below may not be phrased quite right, but they're honest impressions and I hope the songs really speak for themselves. So listen along, and if you don't like one of them, I promise to sit through the absolute worst song of equivalent length you can dredge up from your own collection, whenever you see fit to foist it on me.

1. "Help I'm Alive" by Metric off Fantasies (24 spins)

Love the way the drums start almost like bells, and continually impressed by the really expert, seamless blending of a very simple pop song in the middle of what's otherwise an aggressive, offbeat postpunk piece.

2. "1901" by Phoenix off Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (22 spins)

This song insists on being fun from the first notes, at least if you enjoy fuzzy noises as much as I do. But this one also has a great build to the chorus, and a wonderful variety of guitar sounds.

3. "Warm Heart of Africa" by The Very Best off Warm Heart of Africa (22 spins)

Beautifully adulterated African folk sounds lead you right into one of the very best Vampire Weekend songs that isn't by Vampire Weekend. Ezra Koenig returns the favor from their Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa remix from last year, showing us how bad these guys need to do a whole album together.

4. "Gimme Sympathy" by Metric off Fantasies (21 spins)

I always enjoyed this song, but it wasn't until I saw the video that I really understood how much fun it really is. Something about watching them switch instruments takes all the seriousness and/or pretension out of it and just leaves you smiling.

5. "There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve..." by A.C. Newman off Get Guilty (20 spins)

So much bombast so quickly, but if you can't handle a dose of pretension, then Carl Newman may not have much to offer you. All I can really think to say is that it's a very ambitious song, but he absolutely pulls it off.

6. "Prophets" by A.C. Newman off Get Guilty (20 spins)

Prophets leaves the bombast for the chorus, but it's very simlarly constructed otherwise and really almost as good. Made an awfully heavy-handed HIMYM finale sequence last season almost genuinely moving.

7. "The Ancient Commonsense of Things" by Bishop Allen off Grrr... (19 spins)

I don't actually love this album very much; Bishop Allen may never get back to the splendor of their year of EPs, but this song is a step in the right direction. There's really just no conceivable reason not to listen to this song when it comes on.

8. "All For The Best" by Thom Yorke off Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy (19 spins)

Might be my favorite song of the year if asked straight up; certainly the most emotional one. Working from a heartbreaking backstory, Thom Yorke turns in an expectedly virtuoso performance. I can't imagine anything worse than losing the mother of your children, and that album cover makes me tear up every time. A thorough dirge that still somehow manages some optimism.

9. "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance (Miike Snow remix)" by Vampire Weekend (19 spins)

Probably my favorite VW song (and I love them all dearly), here chopped, beaten, and spun up into something just as lovable. Beautifully maniacal.

10. "Skeletons" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs off It's Blitz! (16 spins)

This album is really a surprise; I figured I was done with the band since I hadn't heard anything that came close to Maps, except maybe that Adidas commercial that Karen O did. Well, this song and the rest of them are all a drastic return to, and extension of, form. Exquisitely produced and arranged without sacrificing too much of their edge.

Except for the Miike Snow remix, you can also play the whole playlist on Lala's site.