It's not often that I get an album that I fall in love with one mere listen, but the minimalistic, post-punk albeit modernized form from the early days within Little Joy is fascinating and addicting. "Rivers" could be one of the top tracks of 2010 and Little Joy may be a top contender for album of the year.
It's cold out, say, and you're curled up by a fire-and there may be a Christmas tree illuminated in the background somewhere-and you're reading over your notes for your final examinations before the Christmas break. You think to yourself, "my I am tired of that cheesy, aweful Christmas music I hear in the stores, on the radio, on television. If only there were something that encapsulated the warmth I'm feeling right now, without all the holiday cheapness."
robin's top albums of 2010, //with no links omg\\ because someone had to.
hi. i'm robin.
when this blog started up, i was just a chirpy kid on a mission to make the best damn buddy cop script of all time. unfortunately, all my musings were based on one-dimensional wannabes. the route-one sidekick, "dylan," for instance, lacked any punch. "rudy" was just a super-serious dr. cox. and kiran was swedish, so that didn't work.
but thanks to the existence of this blog i'm on a constant mission to listen to music. the whole solving-crime thing has taken a backseat.
i'm alert and on the hunt for music, yo.
10. no age - everything in between
sometimes i just really want to go for a tranquil skate around the park. mostly, this happens when i listen to no age, because, in all honesty, i never learned to skateboard. i had one of those fake ones you have as a child but all i ever did was sort of sit on it and fall slowly down my garden.
but this album is really great, and very 'transcendent' or whatever everyone says. lots of cool songs and interludes and no age don't suck anymore. to quote dylan sinsicalchi: "this is awesome."
he probably said that. he says that about a lot of albums.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. maps and atlases - perch patchwork
sometimes i'll look at his facebook statuses and feel really bad for keelan. he has so many essays and usually they're about modernism, which i think drove him to the brink of insanity. but if keelan harkin was writing an essay on perch patchwork, what would he say? he'd say... think of a better opening.
no but seriously, i think he'd laugh at any form of math rock. and so would i, there's this band in my town who think they're insanely experimental for guitar taps and shit, and basically they suck. and all they listen to is maps and atlases, which means they have a tendency to rip off don cab. a lot.
this album, and maps and atlaess in general, is great. rustic and all that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. cherry ghost - beneath this burning shoreline
simon aldred, the guy who wrote this album, compared 'kissing strangers', the album's best track, to the works of frank sinatra. he's kinda right. made obvious from this post: robin has never actually listened to sinatra.
usually any critque on deerhunter would just be the lines "pass the joint" and all that, but as someone who lives in tunbridge wells, cocaine pathway of brighton and london, i am only able to tell you this:
don't do cocaine.
halcyon digest is that album of the year where a band becomes a favourite band. it's not a house anymore... it's a home!
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. women - public strain
you guys probably think i actually like disliking albums that dylan loves, but it's not true. just because i always align myself as 'team kiran' that doesn't mean i don't occasionally listen to people with hilarious facial hair.
and i felt like a complete drag not liking this album, but i find mostly with records like this (that just go on and on and on and on and on) i just need a little push. and that push was snow.
this year, everyone made a big deal about how this album was sufjan becoming royal robertson and going absolutely nuts. but what people fail to understand is that this year i did something far bigger: i became sufjan stevens.
was it the ten thousand times i listened to him from october to the now? or was it the fact that i started a tribute band with two friends and a casio keyboard? who's the real sufjan here? get real get right? oh i'll get real, alright. but yeah, good effort sufjan.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. the magnetic fields - realism
There have been far too many times I've felt these guys would play Field Mice songs much better than the FM ever could have. js. New track, and its good. Thanks Dr. Kiran.