Best Albums of 2010, in a single post...

With a different post each day, it can be kinda unwieldy to read them all. So here's a post with links to each post.

You can also capture all 'Best Of 2010' posts on one page by clicking here or the tags at the bottom of each post.

10. Vampire Weekend - Contra
9. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
8. Sleigh Bells - Treats
7. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
6. Versus - One the Ones and Threes
5. Girl Talk - All Day
4. New Pornographers - Together
3. Spoon - Transference
2. The Roots - How I Got Over
1. Janelle Monae - The Archandroid

Best Albums of 2010 - The ones I liked but not enough to be in the Top 10

There were two full scoops of albums I thought were interesting or amazing, but not amazing enough to be in my Top 10 for the year. These are albums I encourage you to pick up, explore, fall in love with, put on a mixtape. They are albums that fill in the space of a year that my Top 10 could not.

They are indeed excellent albums

J Cole's Friday Night Lights mixtape - In a year of uninteresting hip hop, here is J Cole making me believe in genre that most years I write off for dead. Aggressive on delivery he owns every minute of this mixtape.

Sky Larkin's Kaleide - Brainy, wordy indie pop rock band from Leeds. Katie Harkin's voice is worth the album alone, but there's so much energy here you'll stick around again and again.

Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record - Just a fun dance record. I love Texico Bitches, mostly for the ram ma lam ma ding dong.

Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings' I Learned The Hard Way - Whoa. Don't ever cross Sharon Jones. She will eat your punk ass for dinner, then write an incredible sould song about what a dog you are. And The Dap Kings will be there to back her up.

Shelby Lynne's Tears, Lies and Alibis See above about Sharon Jones. But instead of soul, insert Loretta Lynne country song instead.

Dum Dum Girls' I Will Be - Catchy lo fi fuzzy girl group pop. What's not to like?

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs - Tales of lonely suburban life from that band you used to like until your mom started liking them. Obligatory inclusion? Possibly. But that doesn't not make it a compelling and interesting record.

Best Coast's Crazy For You - Sunny, surfy, lo fi weed rock. You will get a contact buzz reading their twitter. You'll feel euporic just listening to these happy songs.

The Drums' s/t - Surf rock meets the Smiths. That is, dark moody lyrics about love over dreamy surfing guitars.

Superchunk's Majesty Shredding - 10 years since their last album, and Mac and the gang haven't mellowed one bit (insert obligatory slack motherfucker joke here). I think it sounds more like a kicked up Portastatic, since no one can be 19 forever. But damn if this entire album doesn't make you want to pogo around.

Chris Walla and J. Robbins Make Sweet Sweet Music

Oh Bob Boillen. You smooth voiced little music imp of NPR. Your podcasts are so delightfully weird, that there are days that I love them, and days when I want to reach my hands in through the speakers and strangle your throat.

And today, I catch this little amusement you've done on NPR, like some sort of hipster, liberal arts college derived reality TV show for the radio conceit: take two well known musicians (Chris Walla and J. Robbins) and force them to make a song in two days based on a picture they select.

Seriously, I'd simply say WTF and peace out. Unless you were giving out The Women of NPR cheesecake calendars. Sylvia Poggioli and Meshell Norris....rawr...

And yet, what came out was fairly good. I mean, it's Death Cab derivative, but it's remarkably pleasant. I was expecting something else. More folky. I don't know why.

And yet, there's no way for me to purchase the song. Or even an embed code. What do you want, some sort of pledge? You and those fucking pledge drives.

Oooh, a Steve Inskeep beer coozie for a gift of $65!

Check Out Mercury by Chris Wall and J Robbins here

eMusic gets it right?

I was pretty harsh on Twitter about eMusic's summer changes. With the addition of the back catalogs of the major labels, plus the shrinking of my credits, I was not pleased.

But then I read this piece on 17Dots about how they were going to approach Sony, Epic, Arista, etc. And I remembered that I love music. I'm not clinging to indie. Some of my favorite artists are on major labels.

I also picked up MJ's Thriller.

I could see this working. I think eMusic is doing the right thing by expanding its consumer base while trying still honor the music. And this is good.

Remainders

Scrounging around the Remainder bin

- Zak and Shelby peeped me to the Record Store day thing. You know my feelings about digital music. But leave a comment if you'd be interested in me checking this out. Cos I will. I aim to please here. Give the people what they want.

- Big ups to the promotion people at Stunt. Wowzer. They are some kind of amazing. Especially Sue.

- Got a preview of the new A Camp album. That shit is good. GOOD! Like Bowie but better. I'll do a full write up later, but you need to download "Stronger Than Jesus." Like now.

- Do you follow me on Twitter? Seriously, that's where the magic happens. Sweet, < 140 character black magic.

- Last.fm is pretty amazing. You should be rocking that.

- Did you hear Ep #150 of the best damn podcast ever? Okay, you still can. Even after this week is up. So this is a note to people who stumble over this site in the future. Click that link and experience the sexiness that is my voice and the bourbon fueled ramblings of my brain.

- Also future people: do we have flying cars? What about Apple implants in brains?

This weekend was made for whole hogs.

Remainders

So here we start another new feature, called Remainders, where I will attempt to place stuff that doesn't quite generate enough copy for a full post, but still needs to be written about.

Think of Remainders as a collection of Tweets, streamed all at once.

So. let's get our Remainding on!

• I'm very sad I didn't give Hold Steady a fair try in 2008. Stay Positive is a great album. Jeff M, the Human 808, isn't a fan though. He writes that they sound like their previous incarnation, Lifter Puller, but "with more Budweiser."


• Shifted Sound, the best damn indie rock podcast on the planet, has Griffin House live in studio this week (Episode 142). Check it out


• NYC band The Dig has released a three-song demo at their website. A little more hard-rocking than what we normally listen to, it's good stuff. And it's free. And they will also be bringing their psychadelic rock to The Black Cat on Monday Feb 16.


• Amazing Baby's new single Bayonets is alright too. Again, free at various sites around. I wonder how the rest of this album will sound when it comes out this summer. If they take it down on the earnestness level a few notches, it could be really good.


• I am fascinated with this Chris Brown domestic abuse thing. I shouldn't be, but I really can't imagine Chris Brown hitting anyone. I also can't imagine anyone hitting Rhianna (that girl is fwine).

Please feel free to tell me you don't like this feature. We'll try and make it better in the future.