1. Beach House: ‘Teen Dream’ (BELLA UNION)
In recent times, Baltimore has been mainly renowned for its gritty streets in TV masterpiece The Wire, and as the birthplace of psychedelic alchemists Animal Collective. However, in 2010 the city gained enormous amounts of dream pop cache with the release of Beach House’s third album, Teen Dream, a spellbinding and stupefyingly good record.
In a year in which blogs were abuzz with the sounds of countless young men making wistful hazy homages to some sepia-tinged golden age, Beach House trumped them all, combining this woozy beauty with supremely moving songwriting. In Victoria Legrand, they have a frontwoman on top of her game, coming on like a left-field Edith Piaf, delivering one powerful and haunting vocal after another.
This astonishing delivery is accompanied by sparse but hypnotic instrumentation to conjure the kind of timeless immersive quality that all great records possess. On hearing the record pre-release, an acquaintance commented, “November 2009 and I’ve already heard the album of the year for 2010.” How right he was. —PH
2. Janelle Monáe: ‘The ArchAndroid’ (BAD BOY)
Janelle Monáe has taken the music undercurrent by storm with her second album, ArchAndroid. Covering everything from pop to soul to avant-garde, the only pigeonhole this album can be forced into is the pigeonhole of eclectic awesomeness.
Every song on ArchAndroid is meticulously crafted and excellent in its own right, while the album as a whole is a woven narrative that owes much to sci-fi classic Metropolis. The eliding amalgamation of styles is reminiscent of prog rock or early Queen. The upbeat songs are impossible not to groove to, and the melancholy numbers are genuinely touching. If you don’t own this one, put it on your gift list immediately! —LH
3. Courtney Dowe: ‘Accomplice’ (COUNTERPOINT)
It is rare these days to discover such a complete album, perfectly weighted, with different tracks rising gently to prominence on repeated listening. It is even rarer to find an artist with such authenticity that comparisons to Tracy Chapman and Joan Armatrading form a useful pointer rather than gratuitous media hype.
Carrying lightly the mantle of “protest singer,” Dowe breezes effortlessly through profound contemporary issues, with a universal touch accessible to all tiers of society. Although based in the States, she signed this year to an English label and received BBC radio airplay from Gilles Peterson. Her sound is warm, earthy, rich, and most importantly of all, honest. A mainstream breakthrough beckons. —JP
4. Arcade Fire: ‘The Suburbs’ (MERGE)
The third album by the Canadian seven-piece band finds them almost inadvertently hitting the right notes to create a chart-topping classic. Like the suburban landscapes they are about, these songs are strange yet familiar and accessible. Haunted memories are woven into 16 grand, almost theatrical sonic structures that float wave after wave over the listener.
Though lacking some of the edge of debut Funeral, this is lighter than the at times oppressive second album, Neon Bible. Apart from the rockabilly misfit “Month of May,” The Suburbs is a well-realized extension of the band’s rousing and epic sound that draws toward a cinematic close with the sublime “Sprawl.” —SM
5. Glasser: ‘Ring’ (TRUE PANTHER SOUNDS)
A remarkable album that announced a fascinating new talent, Cameron Mesirow’s debut is a stunning mix of thoughtful, layered vocals and lo-fi electronics. Apparently the idea behind Ring is that it has no beginning or end; it is literally cyclical. Whatever the case, tracks bleed into each other organically, slowly easing their way into your consciousness.
Tribal rhythms, soaring strings, and quirky synths underpin Mesirow’s ethereal vocals. Her genius is in tying disparate and eclectic instrumentation into a cohesive and utterly compelling whole. As far as this trip meanders, it’s never very far from a beautiful and unexpected hook. Mesmerizing. —JS
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6. Laura Veirs: ‘July Flame’ (BELLA UNION)
Laura Veirs’s seventh album, released back in the bleak mid-winter of January, is an enchanting acoustic song cycle reflective of the changing seasons. Melancholy and dreamy shadows are punctuated by warm shafts of sunlight through the trees and the promise of the ripe fruit of summer.
Named after a type of peach available at the hottest time of the year, which allegedly cured her of writer’s block, this is Veirs’s finest work and full of wide-eyed wonder and innocence. Jim James from My Morning Jacket, who contributes his pure voice on a number of songs, sums it up: “Laura’s like the queen bee and my ear is her hive; she nests and makes honey in the hairs of my cochlea.” —SM
7. Twin Shadow: ‘Forget’ (4AD)
George Lewis Jr’s debut record is the kind of accomplished, polished work that respected bands dream of producing five albums into their careers. Described as “bedroom music” by its creator, the connotations that this statement carries couldn’t point much further from the truth. Every second of this record is arranged and produced meticulously, and the irresistible slew of faintly grandiose pop songs contained herein is a genuine treat.
From the dark chug of “Slow,” through the galloping “At My Heels” and the sinister funk of “For Now,” it is clear that Lewis is a preternaturally gifted songwriter. This album is the pinnacle of a superb year for the 4AD label. —PH
8. Half Seas Over: ‘Half Seas Over’ (BROWNSWOOD)
Accomplished jazz pianist Elan Mehler and folk-rock singer-songwriter Adam McBride-Smith make an unlikely duo, but their self-titled debut is a stunning marriage of styles. McBride-Smith’s upbeat vocals and Mehler’s melancholy piano work are turned to all sorts of genres, from slow jazz numbers to sanguine songs that wouldn’t seem out of place on a sunny Parisian side street.
Particular highlights include the salubrious “Get Me to the Station” and brooding reflective number “The New Breed,” though to hear the best song by the duo (as proclaimed by Mehler himself), you’ll need to listen to Mehler’s 2009 solo album The After Suite. —LH
9. Laura Marling: ‘I Speak Because I Can’ (VIRGIN)
The English folk scene prizes above all its strict requirements of authenticity and respect for tradition, with any pandering to the foibles of the masses considered a cardinal, unforgivable sin. Thus, perhaps the one thing rarer than a bona fide folk artist breaking through to the mainstream is a mainstream artist gaining respect in the English folk scene. And yet this is what Laura Marling has done.
Her honesty and innocence and heartfelt soul are the definitive factors. And if Marling can form a gateway to genuine folk music, much like Steeleye Span appearing on Top of The Pops in the early 1970s did, who could say that is a bad thing? —JP
10. Wild Nothing: ‘Gemini’ (CAPTURED TRACKS)
For a generation steeping themselves in nostalgia for a time they never knew, the current crop of shoegaze-imbued indie pop is manna from heaven. Like much of the music so irritatingly tagged “chillwave” and “glo-fi,” the kind of fuzzy-edged classic indie that Jack Tatum plies is wistful and utterly comfortable in its melancholy.
On this debut, Tatum perfects the blueprint laid down by bands such as The Radio Dept in recent years, making sadness sound deliciously sweet. Each song homes into view, bombs us with gorgeous melody, and then fades out in a trice, a kind of parallel to the feeling of exquisite loss so wonderfully communicated throughout this album. —PH
