In no particular order:
The Good
The Black Keys - Brothers
Crystal Castles - S/T (2010)
Dead Weather - Sea of Cowards
Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here
Harlem - Hippies
High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine
Jack Rose - Luck in the Valley
Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
Magnetic Fields - Realism
Mi Ami - Steal Your Face
The National - High Violet
Nice Nice - Extra Wow
People of the North - Deep Tissue
Phosphorescent - Here's To Taking it Easy
Pocahaunted - Make it Real
Roky Erickson & Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil
Sleigh Bells - Treats
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
Team Ghost - You Never Did Anything Wrong to Me
Thee Oh Cees - Weird Slime
These New Puritans - Hidden
Ty Segall - Melted
U.S. Girls - Go Grey
Woods - At Echo Lake
The RAD
Alcest - Ecailles de Lune
Beach House - Teen Dream
Four Tet -There is Love in You
High Places - Vs. Mankind
Hot Chip - One Life Stand
Imperium Dekadenz - Procella Vadens
Lair of the Minotaur - Evil Power
Liars - Sisterworld
Midlake - The Courage of Others
Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise
Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
Real Estate - Reality EP
The Soft Pack - S/T
Sun Araw - On Patrol
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Kollaps Tradixionales
Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Yeasayer - Odd Blood
Yellow Swans - Going Places
Zola Jesus - Stridulum EP
The Ugly
Awesome Color - Massa Hypnos
Fang Island - S/T
Growing - Pumps!
Jonsi - Go
The Knife - Tomorrow, In A Year
Love Is All - Two Thousand & Ten Injuries
Owen Pallet - Heartland
Sightings - City of Straw
Spoon - Transference
Zs - New Slaves
I like Jonsi - go.
ReplyDeleteother than that, your opinions are solid. Especially about Alcest.
Everything this year has so much fucking reverb.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to making the mix feel real? I remember when guitars threatened to cut your head off with dragon teeth and blow torch buzz saws, even the aucustic ones, in real rooms (sometimes living rooms). And that was even on the pretty albums like those by Royal City.
I blame the band of hoses/my morning jacket/every fucking US band with more then 2 memebers since that movie about the guy who is on prescription pills and feels good about himself at the end because he meets a girl on prescription pills and it's raining in a junk yard or something visceral like that.
The sad thing is it seems bands with two members are the effing saviours these days. That is a shite state of affairs if I ever saw one. I mean how hard is it to put on a tight live show when there is just a guitar and a drum. Fuck that.
What I'm really trying to say is this: Did Steve Albini retire or something? He would shit shrapnel on this list. No offense, I like you and your taste cuts through the bullshit, it's just slim pickings.
To paraphrase Prof. Zappa: If our future children find out how lame we really are without the hype they will murder us in our sleep.
Love
Andrew Clark