Albums
of the year
2010
I felt it appropriate this year to change the title of my annual best albums post by replacing the word KILL with LIVE. It has the same effect I think, but with a positive slant. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to do this post at all since, as some of you know, my Mom passed away last month from a 15+ year battle with congestive heart failure. My original intention was for the first time to actually write my own reviews (who would have thought, right?), but the events of the past couple months have had the bulk of my free time. So instead of not abandoning my yearly tradition (when there are so many great albums which must be heard by all of you!), I figured I would do it as I have in years past. To compensate, however, I created a companion playlist you can stream at Grooveshark so that you can effortlessly listen to tracks from this year’s esteemed “winners”! I picked two tracks from each album, which was a tough call as there really aren’t any bad tracks on any of these albums. For the album from Janelle Monáe I picked 3 songs to be fair, as the album is so incredibly long and every track is fantastic. I believe in my heart of hearts these albums would be rewarding for each and every one of you to pick up and listen to, in full, and as loud as possible. These are also in no particular order, except for the first album by Radio Dept, which is without any doubt the best of the year. Enjoy, and drive with aloha …
7
Salem
King Knight
“Over the course of their prolific singles and EPs, Holland, John Donoghue and Heather Marlatt shaped a sound that was as distinctive as it was improbable, fusing beats descended from juke and Southern hip-hop, electronics with a goth bent and shoegazing guitars into something deeply weird and trippy but also surprisingly natural, as if those elements had just been waiting to be combined. On the surface, goth and hip-hop may not have much in common, but they often share a bleak romanticism that Salem has in spades.” – All Music
“It’s a sound that towers above the listener, moves in semi-ponderous lurches, frightens the living hell out of anyone in its proximity and yet, despite all this, is somehow willing and brave enough to show us tiny glimpses of its nearly-human soul. King Night belongs where it was made: either festering in the disturbed minds of its creators or, once awakened, lurking in the dank, lightless graveyards of an urban wasteland. By creating a world so comic-book vivid, each track stands and walks in its own desolate, saturnine world. But it’s a world where the dead want to be alive and the alive would rather be dead. The creation of warped minds, Salem just made a monster.” – Music OMH