A. V. Club's 25 Best Albums of 2010: 19. "Odd Blood" Yeasayer

The best music of 2010

by Jason Heller, Steven Hyden, Spencer Kornhaber, Genevieve Koski, Chris Martins, Michaelangelo Matos, Josh Modell, Noel Murray, Sean O?Neal, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, Kyle Ryan, Christian Williams

"Here?s how The A.V. Club comes up with our yearly list of the Top 25 albums: We collectively try to decide what the mythical ?hipsters? want us to put on the list, then vote accordingly. Wait, no, that?s not what we do at all. We ask 16 writers who regularly contribute record reviews to the site to disperse 100 points each over no more than 15 albums. No album can receive more than 15 points or less than one point from any given contributor. Then we tally, and you hopefully post your favorite albums of 2010 in the comments section. (And hopefully not by starting, ?You guys are retarded,? because it?s much harder to take your selections seriously that way.) We mean it, too?we want to know what you loved this year as well. In a separate feature, you?ll find each contributor?s ballot, along with some commentary on favorite albums that didn?t make this list.

25. Spoon: Transference
(17 points, 3 votes)

"Three years after Spoon released the polished, catchy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, bandleaders Britt Daniel and Jim Eno rediscovered deconstruction on album number seven, producing a set of songs that teeter toward collapse before finding a beat or a riff that the band can follow like a homing beacon. Spoon has been so consistently good over the past decade that Transference was greeted with only mild enthusiasm when it was released back in January, but it?s worn well as 2010 has rolled on. In a year that has seen established acts pushing themselves and exciting new acts emerging, Spoon still feels relevant, if only for the way Daniel and Eno keep discovering new ways to reinvest themselves in their work. They diligently pull songs apart, searching for that inspired moment that Transference dubs ?The Mystery Zone.?

 

Four Tet

There Is Love In You

(18 points, 2 votes)

"This has been a year of bad news, but somehow that didn?t apply to electronic music. The blissful streak running through mixes, albums, and tracks by artists like Caribou, Lone, Juan MacLean, Pawel, and Tensnake managed to cut through everything, and no dance-identified artist made a record as purely agog as Kieran Hebden?s fifth album as Four Tet. Its big tracks start simple and unfold patiently, the music building evenly and with great delicacy, its climaxes occurring when all the elements are woven together at once, rather than when the dynamics start to heave. There Is Love In You is meditative, but it?s also active: The shifts in the arrangements stir and settle with the attention to detail of headphone music and the moving, breathing rhythms of a body in restless motion. Four Tet did a lot in 2010: terrific remixes of Bob Holroyd, The Dining Rooms, Rocketnumbernine, Jon Hopkins, and Anti-Pop Consortium, among others; fine DJ sets for Fact Magazine and Essential Mix. But the album is the one that?s built to last."

 

Titus Andronicus

The Monitor

(19 points, 2 votes)

"Don?t get too hung up on all the Civil War-concept-album talk surrounding this Jersey quintet?s second release. Sure, The Monitor hosts monologues from Abraham Lincoln recited by Craig Finn, but that?s as far as the War Between The States motif goes. More salient to The Monitor is the war between states of mind: on one side, crippling depression wrought from the allure of go-along conformity, and on the other side, crippling depression wrought from embracing the idea that we all are totally ****** alone. In other words, Titus Andronicus is attacking the entire human condition, which helps explain why the band felt okay making an absolutely gargantuan, so-overstuffed-it?s-genius album. Most of the songs feel like free-association punk novellas, chugging for interminable minutes and quavering not only between both sides of the loud/soft borderline, but also, for example, between hatred/triumph, self-reflection/self-immolation, and no-bagpipes/bagpipes. It?s a lot to take in, but the band?s vehemence is addictive, as is Patrick Stickles? quotable gargling. (?You ain?t never been no virgin kid, you were ****** from the start!?) Proportion and tact don?t factor into the album?s design, but the same goes in love and war."

 

I actually enjoy that album. I love The Hold Steady, so when I heard Titus Andronicus was influenced by them, and Craig Finn was on the album a wee bit, I gave it a listen. My favorite song is "Theme from 'Cheers'". Its not a perfect, or even great album, but its fun. And I'm from the tri-state area so I like their references to stuff like the Fung Wah bus and the Merritt Parkway. And anyband that shouts out Key Stone Light is ok in my book.

 

Flying Lotus

Cosmogramma

(20 points, 2 votes)

"Arguably the most ambitious electronic album of the past decade, Flying Lotus? Cosmogramma is a monstrous document whose secrets only begin to show after the 10th listen. Naturally, this makes for a prohibitively dense first impression, but Lotus never punishes his listeners for diving deeper. Instead, he rolls back one musical galaxy after the next, folding Squarepusher?s drums and bass into Burial?s dubby darkness into Mr. Fingers? deep house into Sun Ra?s freewheeling jazz. With few breaks between tracks, it?s essentially a 45-minute bout of astral traveling where even the hallowed alien coo of guest vocalist Thom Yorke is disembodied, sent careening down a wormhole lined with shards of glass and circuitry. Elsewhere in the maelstrom is the better part of a string section, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (Lotus is John?s great nephew), at least one sample sourced from a basement ping-pong game, and the most badass bassist this side of Mingus?a man called Thundercat. With so many potentially rogue elements bouncing off one another, Cosmogramma should?ve been an unholy mess, but Lotus proved himself with this one. The end result, orchestrated with a virtuosic touch, instead feels closer to the divine."

 

That album's CRAZY. In a good way.

 

Baths

Cerulean

(20 points, 2 votes)

"Precocious, brilliantly sloppy, and equipped with the semi-improvised percussive palette of a skiffle artist, Will Wiesenfeld, a.k.a. Baths, constructs bedroom symphonies with the luxurious, high-thread-count atmospherics of Toro Y Moi and beats granular and glitchy enough to underpin a Prefuse 73 track. It may be no great shakes at this point to pull a drum pattern or two out of phase or to let a ream of magnetic tape blister in the sun before popping it in, but unlike many of his colleagues in distressed beatsmithing, Wiesenfeld seems more likely to build a kick-ass pillow-fort than to drop psychedelics. Naïve and sophisticated in equal measure, Cerulean prunes its classical-piano figures before they grow too ornate, and drops the eerie baby-talk for restrained earnestness as the situation demands. Mostly though, it?s an album that feels as sweetly sharp-edged?yet still kid-safe?as shattered candy glass."

 

20. Dessa

A Badly Broken Code

(21 points, 2 votes)

"Dessa?s fluid, spoken-word-derived delivery and beautifully sung (sans Auto-Tune) hooks place A Badly Broken Code on the outskirts of the traditional ?rap? designation, but her debut full-length is all the more exciting for the hip-hop conventions it flouts. The sole female in the Twin Cities-based Doomtree collective, who split production duties on Code, Dessa hews close to the group?s introspective, punk-derived aesthetic, but with a well-honed literary sensibility, resulting in sharply crafted lyrics that are clever and forthright in equal measure. Code?s lyrical wordsmithery?heavy on metaphor, allusion, and allegory?is dense but inviting, thanks in large part to Dessa?s rich, honeyed vocals, which are strong and confident whether she?s rapping or singing a cappella. It?s a remarkably self-assured debut that showcases Dessa?s background in philosophy and creative writing without flaunting it, and introduces an intriguing new voice in the Midwest indie-hip-hop scene."

 

19. Yeasayer
Odd Blood
February 9th, 2010
CD | MP3 | Vinyl

 

Great and interesting album. I like it a lot.