Double feature today! Before I finish this party, here are some brief opinions on other albums I listened to in 2010. This is far from a completely inclusive picture of everything I heard in 2010, but it is the stuff I remember off the top of my head. I also am restricting myself to two sentences at the most for each, to counterbalance the long-winded nature of every other fucking thing I have been writing this month. Here it goes!
Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele: Not much to say that is not already obvious from the EP title. I like her, and she is married to Neil Gaiman now, so good for them?
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: I feel like they sacrificed creativity for consistency, and in the process they made a decent indie rock album, but nothing as wonderful as Funeral or Neon Bible. Not my cup of tea, but I guess I can understand why this was one of the year's critical darlings.
Beach House - Teen Dream: Dream pop tends to not be my cup of tea. This album is no exception.
The Books - The Way Out: I really like what The Books do with samples, but I just don't like actually listening to their music quite as much.
Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer: I was really excited about this, but the album as an entity was only alright. There are a few excellent tracks ("Bright Lights Bigger City," "Fuck You," "No One's Gonna Love You"), and Cee Lo's voice is amazing as always, but I wish the album was better.
Chromeo - Business Casual: Really, really, really fun dance pop.
Daft Punk - Tron Legacy Soundtrack: It sounds like any other modern Hollywood soundtrack, with just the tiniest peppering of Daft Punk. I'm sure it works fine in the movie, but it could have been so much more.
Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul: I liked this and need to listen to it more.
DE DE MOUSE - A journey to freedom: DE DE MOUSE has one style, and that is akin to little kids playing a candy-coated NES. I like that sound in small spoonfuls, but it gets grating over the length of an album.
deadmau5 - 4x4=12: Above-average techno and house jams. I was hoping this could fill the lack of a proper Daft Punk or Justice release this year, but it does not.
Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest: I still do not get Deerhunter. Sorry?
DEVO - Something for Everybody: This album is awesome, filled with catchy electropop from one of the pioneers of the genre. Good times to be had with this as the soundtrack.
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh): Really impressive neo-soul from another artist into whom I need to look more deeply. One of the albums I kinda regret not being able to fit into my official list.
Fang Island - Fang Island: Fluctuates between pretty fucking enjoyable and only slightly engaging. Everyone high-fiving everyone, etc.
Field Music - Measure: It was good to hear from these guys again, and this has some of my favorite tracks of 2010, but overall there are too many lackluster songs. I feel it could have been so much better if they had pared it down to half the length and worked harder on making that into a complete album.
Four Tet - There is Love in You: Another album that almost made the list. Not much fault to be found in it; I just have not listened to it much outside of the beginning of the year.
George & Jonathan - The Best Music: Chiptunes done right. Fun from start to finish, and you should go download it now, because it is free.
Girl Talk - All Day: Girl Talk keeps doing that thing that he does well.
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach: Despite my not being too keen on their first two albums, this one keeps growing on me.
Hans Zimmer - Inception Soundtrack: BWONNGGGGGGGG.
Holy Fuck - Latin: Good, interesting electronic album.
How to Destroy Angels - How to Destroy Angels: I liked this. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this project in the future.
immi - Spiral: A lot of modern Japanese electropop artists have fallen into a rut of sounding the same as everyone else. This album starts with a promise of something different, but ends up not being so innovative.
Jim O'Rourke - All Kinds Of People: Love Burt Bacharach: If you love Burt Bacharach (as I do), and even if you do not, this album of rather odd covers is very much worth hearing. There is something sublime about hearing Haruomi Hosono sing "Close to You."
Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me: There is about one CD's worth of songs I am okay with scattered across three CDs. Ambitious, but I find too much of it uninteresting, and I'd much rather listen to Ys three times.
Jónsi - Go: Not anything I wasn't expecting, but decent enough.
M.I.A. - /\/\/\Y/\: I actually enjoyed this album for the most part, and I think a lot of the critical backlash was unwarranted. Who else samples power tools?
The Magnetic Fields - Realism: They keep doing their wry lo-fi pop thing. Good, but not up to the high standard they have set for themselves.
Mantler - Monody: I am upset that I had to remove this from the list to make room for another album. These are some of the best soft and slow jams you will hear all year.
Meja - AniMeja ~Ghibli Songs~: A Swedish girl sings covers of Studio Ghibli movie songs. Soft and saccharine, but good at what it does.
Misteur Valaire - Golden Bombay: Interesting underground electropop. Fuck, this is better than I remember.
MGMT - Congratulations: These guys have got some balls to release this as the follow-up to Oracular Spectacular. I like it a lot more consistently than OS, too, so kudos to them!
Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More: Authentic-sounding Americana from some blokes from London. It's really good too, and another album I need to play more.
Nobuo Uematsu - Distant Worlds II: more music from FINAL FANTASY: THESE ARE THE BEST LIVE ORCHESTRAL RECORDINGS OF FINAL FANTASY SONGS I HAVE EVER HEARD, AND THE ONLY REASON I DID NOT INCLUDE IT IN THE MAIN LIST IS THAT THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO NEW MATERIAL HERE. This version of "Dancing Mad" would have been a perfect interpretation if it had repeated the last part a few more times in order to include the extended guitar solo from "The Black Mages" version.
The Octopus Project - Hexadecagon: There are some moments here that are pure Riley/Reich/Glass-inspired awesomeness, but there is not enough of it.
Of Montreal - False Priest: Some good tunes, and more okay ones. This is not a bad album, but come on Kevin Barnes, you can rock my face off better than this.
Old Man Luedecke - My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs: Durn good folk/country/bluegrass tunes.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - History of Modern: Another '80s band produces another pretty damn good electronic album.
Röyksopp - Senior: It's good, but a lot of other bands have already done this kind of stuff and done it better, including Röyksopp.
sasakure.UK - ボーカロイドは終末鳥の夢を見るか?: The Vocaloid album I did not like as much as Baphomet. I absolutely love some of the songs, but the rest are pretty boring.
school food punishment - amp-reflection: The promise of their early releases yields some disappointingly standard Japanese rock fare.
Shinichi Osawa - SO2: Pretty good and catchy house stuff.
Shugo Tokumaru - Port Entropy: I love this guy, and I kinda love this album, but he layers the sugar and 3-over-2 hemiolas a bit too thickly this time around. Too many of the songs sound samey, and that is unforgivable for Shugo.
Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites: THIS is the Daft Punk/Justice successor I was looking for. It is brutally short (granted, it is an EP), but the tracks are all killer.
Spoon - Transference: Spoon have a thing that they do well, and they keep doing it. I'd rather listen to Gimme Fiction or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga than this, though, so there is really no reason to listen to it.
White Hinterland - Kairos: Ms. Dienel, this album is anything but bad, but please go back to playing weird jazz tunes on your piano. I can listen to Wind-Up Canary on repeat only so many times, and you would make my life with a proper follow-up.
White Hinterland - Eidolon EP: Okay, this R&B cover is actually incredible. I will settle for an album of stuff like this, so why don't you meet me in the middle?
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