What the Wolf listened to in 2010

No matter how many days I have sweated over the subjective finer detail of one artist’s oozing creativity over another’s ­– ­­in the struggle to distinguish victors I may have set apart two albums by comparing the resonance of a cowbell in each, or asked how a vocalist delivers the most beautiful line of a song with a poignant creak in her voice (despite the likelihood of it being an accidental result of not having enough evian in the studio) – it does not detract from the fact that you will view this list, and every other ‘x of the year’ as plain self-indulgence. And I thank you for this recognition. The following albums will, I guarantee, feature albums that make your Japanese spotted fever reappear somewhere sensitive or inaccessible. And it will omit those albums that were the soundtracks to your free-loving summer, or maybe finally cured your stutter. Allow me to discharge this list, not as the definitive guide to 2010, but as a mannerism; a reflection of my inclinations and peculiarities.

10:
The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night

The title suggests that it is the second part of their previous album The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse [2007], and if they were once a dark horse they are now vehemently blazing. This, the Montreal rockers’ third album, is as loud as it is gentle. It features psychedelic sagas such as Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent that is separated into an intro that warps and oscillates before the second part unleashes astral vocals and a sound that roars like a detonated behemoth. The lead single Albatross disregards the format and offers something altogether more tender, but not without a boom or two. While And This is What We Call Progress captures the album better than any other; it ascends through an atmosphere-dripping haze to appear as a fist-pumping, rock anthem.
Sounds like: Murky, emphatic majesty.

9:

Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

It is impossible to find just one genre to comprise “FlyLo”’s style. He’s as much Electronica as he is Trip-Hop, Breakbeat as he is Jazz, Hip-Hop as he is Dub. Another to strike gold with his third full album, the LA-based experimentalist boasts a formidable heritage. Descending from the Coltrane family (including the legendary Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and his wife the pianist Alice Coltrane, and the current post-bop supremo Ravi Coltrane (who features on the album)), FlyLo comes with portfolio. Each song is a musical vagabond, snaking its way through the genres. Thom Yorke lends his voice to help drop the otherworldly beats of ...And the World Laughs With You. While Do the Astral Plane transforms be-bop into grimy electro.
Sounds like: Ineffable commingling.

8:
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

If, at first, this album doesn’t appeal, try listening to it while watching Magnum P.I. with the sound down. The second in the list to hail from LA, Ariel Pink delivers his very own brand of psychedelic folk that has affinities with B-52s, Pink Floyd or T-Rex more than anything sprouting today – no band is brave enough to allow a sax and bass to spoon one another in absurd harmony quite like Ariel. He has recorded several hundred songs, each assumedly charming and odd as the next. Now playing with his band, Haunted Graffiti, an emphasis has been on producing the same quirkiness but with a studio sound. Enter Before Today. The album boasts hip-swinging disco, scuzzy psychedelica, and fist-clenching powerpop. Who couldn’t resist lyrics like “I want a lady as beautiful as a sunset on a strip”?
Sounds like: Sipping a Malibu sporting Wayfarers and Speedos. And pulling it off.

7:
Spoon – Transference

Spoon have been around for a musical epoch. This is album number seven, spanning 16 years of activity, but maturity has not withered or silenced the Texan indie rockers. In fact, the latest is the most ambitious yet. The album displays insouciance to presupposed format and structure – often rejecting conventional routes between verse and chorus, instead opting for garden paths and desire lines. This is an archetype of the slow-burner. Released at the very beginning of the year, only in the last few months has it finally spoken to me. But boy, am I now ensnared. The tracks fulfil that cliché of taking ‘you somewhere’ - tracks like Who Makes Your Money send you gliding into soporific visions. From beginning to end, the album advances a tempered rhythm that readily melts the ears.
Sounds like: Hypnotic and pulsating fervour with the lifespan of chronic malaria.

6:
Antony and the Johnsons – Swanlights

I haven’t yet given melancholy a chance. However, for once, neither does Antony Hegarty and co. Album number four brings surprising amounts of optimism where it wasn’t necessarily before. The previous albums explored funereal topics, and where they were steeped in the fragility of life, this offering suggests more buoyancy and solace. Thank You For Your Love and I’m in Love take an Antony and the Johnsons’ album into unknown domains. While even the garden-variety despair is discomposed by orchestral strings and touches of spirit that raise it above the dirge - Fletta, which features Björk, has a galvanising piano chorus, Salt Silver Oxygen features a levity because of an orchestral backing that embraces elements of English folk song. Finally, in keeping with these disunions, Christina’s Farm usurps the entire album with a tale of redemption played out like the album’s last rites.
Sounds like: A benevolent spirit’s soiree.

5:
Four Tet – There Is Love in You

The emphasis of Kieran Hebden’s recent work has been on remixing anything and anyone, from Radiohead, Badly Drawn Boy, the XX and many many more. So much so, that he released an entire album of remixes back in 2006. Before this, he crafted a minimalist style that infused jazz and electronica, amongst others, and gained terrific success with Rounds [2003]. With three albums coming in between Rounds and this latest, Hebden has been distracted from this minimalist approach, spending more time on the decks than in production. There Is Love in You reveals itself as a compromise between these disciplines. Tracks like Sing have a beat that feels at home in clubs, while She Just Likes to Fight introduces soothing levels of folk that haven’t been witnessed since those more minimalist days. Although this compromise has been found, it should be made clear that Hebden’s experimental quintessence is not beleaguered. In fact, it carries the album – never have giddy beats been so richly mixed with moments of calm. Or at least, well.
Sounds like: A mosaic fashioned by a multifarious DJ.

4:

Caribou – Swim

Dan Snaith’s latest wowed festival crowds, charming Leeds and Reading, End of the Road and the Big Chill festivals, and leading to the album’s lead track Odessa becoming a marvellous and infectious summer anthem. Swim is the most upbeat and the most aggressive album to appear on this list - Sun could lead the most placid man on the planet to bare his chest and beat three times with a smoldering iron in hand, or as many times as to enforce his masculinity. The album conveys this aggression through the periodicity of its beats – with its shrilling bells and near permanent bass, Bowls could be the ominous march of an android army. The musical directions keep the listener constantly stimulated and surprised; Snaith throws dreamy synth into the mix and incorporates his fair share of dancefloor-friendly euphoria.
Sounds like: Freddy Krueger getting himself in the mood.

3:
The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt

I’m tentative to rate singer-songwriters too highly. There’s a cliché associated with a singer and his or her guitar – one that often makes me feel sick to listen to, or remind me of James Blunt, or both. But Swedish folk artist, Kristian Matsson stands above this crowd. Vocally, he’s the lovechild of Bob Dylan and Finley Quaye and lyrically he rises above the usual pomp too: ‘This is not the summer dream she said, it’s just the drying of the lawns I want to leave out there’. It’s an album that moves and to be played while moving. Whether it is journeying through the States in a chevy pickup with the window wound down and going nowhere in particular, or returning on a long-distance train from a weekend with a sweetheart, The Wild Hunt provides the transition and the strength to go on.
Sounds like: Firelight, hushed voices and tenderness.

2:
Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest

Separating this album from the number 1 in this list wasn’t an easy task. This album is just as well-executed and lacquered and probably more diverse - the Atlantan collective’s fourth album is as close to perfection as you could possibly imagine. Diversity is here in abundance. There’s out and out 1960s pop smashes like Memory Boy and Fountain Stairs – they are both shy of 3 minutes long and act as restorations from the spectral Earthquake and Sailing. The album’s lead track Revival is a jangly psychedelic piece, but the tracks that stand out as a cut above, the already scintillating, rest are Helicopter and Desire Lines. The former drones beautifully like something from the Pixies, while the latter could be mistaken for an Arcade Fire epic (a band that is a glaring omission from this list of the year’s top albums – I have my reasons). Comparisons aside, what is indubitable is that Deerhunter have created archetypes of the very best from each of these eras. But neither is it pastiche. Instead, they have written ageless odes that place them at the very top of modern music.
Sounds like:  An assorted biscuit box full of Scottish shortbread, macaroons and those Swiss ones with legions of chocolate. Exquisite.

1:
The National – High Violet

It’s hard to justify an album as the best of its year, but then The National make that job just a little easier. Album number five for the Cincinatti five-piece brings something richly deserved: commercial success. High Violet made it into top ten album charts worldwide and to no great surprise. Lead singer Matt Berninger’s deep baritone vocals navigate the album through lush rock ballads and restrained anthems. It’s been a good number of years since I’ve heard a set of songs so emotionally affecting. Listening to Englandand ‘Put an ocean and a river between everything, yourself and home’ you can’t help but conceive, or recall, being left behind by loved ones plunging into faraway lands. Similarly Runaway, musically sparse, entrusts Berninger’s passionate and sentimental voice to deliver another pensive and reflective reverie. As well as these mellow pieces, rockier offerings like Lemonworld, Anyone’s Ghostand Bloodbuzz Ohio provide a heartbeat for the album. However, it’s Berninger’s genuine voice that resonates; it is heard in no better place than in the album’s closing track Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks where it cracks, strains and fissures to reveal The National’s unrivalled ability to create rugged and yet delicate reminders of life’s preciousness.

Happy New Year from the New Wolf and good listening for 2011.

Christo Hall
The New Wolf 

last time modified: July 15, 2011, 4 p.m.