But who the fuck is choosing these Grammy nominees? Arcade Fire, Eminem, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Lady Antebellum? Cee-Lo wins “Best Urban/Alternative Performance”? Kanye West gets one nomination and it’s for “Best Rap Solo Performance” and it’s for fucking “Power” of all things? I’m speechless. I didn’t watch the Grammy’s and I know everyone says they’re meaningless, but guys, they’re not really meaningless. Me and you and Joe Indie Fan know the worthlessness of a Grammy win, but 25.8 MILLION people watched that show.

Did you see, DO YOU HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING?! Twenty-five point eight million fucking people take this seriously! That’s how many people – give or take – think the best albums of the year were by the Arcade Fire, Eminem, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Lady Antebellum! That’s how many people think “Urban” means black!

What horrifies me so much about this list of nominees and winners is that they are clearly selected by people who don’t listen to music. And I know I can’t expect a bunch of unsigned indie bands that actually deserve this shit to get nominated. I’m not that naïve. I’m just saying there is such a thing as the People’s Choice Awards in which the most popular artists win little clear glass vaginahands, and people who care about popularity contests – they have their place – watch that show and are proud of their favorite artist. This is the proper forum to honor Ms. Perry, Ms. Gaga, Ms. Antebellum, and Mr. Nem. There is no veneer of respectability or quality, just piglets smashing their hooves into voting devices. My problem with the Grammy’s (and the Oscar’s to a lesser degree) is that they pretend at dignity. They pretend that they are more than a showcase for the wealthiest, most banal artists to sell more records. It reminds me of those beauty pageants whose “winner” is determined by the contestant who donates the most money.

This is probably the thing that bothers me most about the big Arcade Fire win. Do I like this band? Not particularly.

Did they put out the best album of last year? Not even close.

Are they infinitely, inherently better than every other artist nominated in every category combined? FUCKING OF COURSE THEY ARE. But it’s like Panera beating McDonald’s, KFC, and Taco Bell for World’s Best Restaurant.

And now the internets are ablaze with people up in arms because they’ve never heard of the Arcade Fire, which means, logically, that the Arcade Fire sucks. PEOPLE: THIS IS NOT WHY THE ARCADE FIRE SUCKS. By all means, hate the Arcade Fire because they’re pompous, self-important assholes, not because you’ve never heard of them! This is the consequence of disguising popularity as quality: people think that if it isn’t popular, it isn’t worth knowing.

Is that what the people behind the Grammy’s want, in their heart of hearts? Ask yourself why they picked The Suburbs as album of the year. Ask yourself what the people who pick the Grammy’s actually listen to on their iPods. Are they malicious or just wildly irresponsible? Do they agree with the whole “if it ain’t popular, it ain’t good” sentiment, or are they just ignorant to the side effects of the medicine they’re peddling? Did they actually enjoy The Suburbs?

Ok, I’m angry and rambling and losing my train of thought. I know I’m just sending my nerd-rage out into the ether and that the people who will read this dismissed the Grammy’s long ago and the people who need to read it won’t. However, I also know that this site gets a tremendous amount of Google Image Search traffic when I post photos of bland famous people or make a big long list of buzzwords, so I’m doing that again today. So in conclusion, good job, Arcade Fire, I guess. Grammy’s: go fuck yourself.

Jonas Brothers Love Bugs Britney Spears Kardashian sex tape naked Egypt Justin Bieber Nicki Minaj Twilight Eclipse New Moon Twitter Facebook iPad vampires Selena Gomez sexy underpants.

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I synchronized this with the release of Oscar nominations. America’s two most important cultural events all in one day!

How can you stand it!

Albums #1-10

10. Everything In Between by No Age

It’s easy to forget that there are only two members of LA-based punk outfit No Age gauged by the sheer amount of noise they can produce. Ostensibly a salute to office drones, Everything In Between’s lyrics take a back seat as usual to the propulsive, fuzzed-out guitar and grimy, noisy, wall-of-sound lo-fi production. Everything In Between is a big, loud, head-filling record in the vein of Sonic Youth or Husker Du without all the yowling. While 2008’s Nouns was terrific, it was  an album-person’s album (and, to be honest, a bit tinny to my ears). Everything works as a mellower, disciplined whole, but also, shockingly, as individual singles. In fact, “Glitter,” “Depletion,” and “Valley Hump Crash” are practically mixtape fodder, something I never thought I would say about No Age songs. Regardless, Everything In Between is a superb follow-up to one of 2008’s biggest surprises and a great starting point for new converts.

Listen to all of Everything In Between

9. The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monae

Ok, so I didn’t actually review this in the middle of the year, but you got the point. One of the most buzzed-about records of 2010, The ArchAndroid earned every ounce of its reputation as an accomplished, strange, scene-changing debut. Dipping her toes in multiple genres, Janelle Monae really does seem like the sentient, sexy robot she portrays, a master of all styles but disciple to none. Just when the R&B is about to wear thin, bam! There’s a rock track. Not digging the rock? No worries, there’s a pastoral Midlake-style ballad coming up, and also a guest appearance by Of Montreal, that incredible Big Boi song, and have you seen her dance? Jesus! Part of the joy of listening to or watching Janelle Monae is her showmanship, the unflappable confidence of someone who knows she’s created something unlike anything that came before, and that it’s fucking great. Like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the 1927 film that inspired the album, The ArchAndroid is the enormously ambitious work of a true auteur, influenced by divergent art that came before, but 100% certain to influence what comes after.

Listen to all of The ArchAndroid

8. Majesty Shredding by Superchunk

Like I said in my Spoon review, sometimes a band needs to go away for nine years to be appreciated. That said, please stick around for a while, Superchunk. I missed you. Rock and roll missed you.

So it turns out all that tasty Merge money hasn’t mellowed these indie rock statesmen in the least. Majesty Shredding can stand alongside Here’s Where the Strings Come In as one of the band’s best, an agreeable, rocking earwig full of big hooks, clever lyrics, and some serious guitar pyrotechnics. What makes Majesty Shredding – and most Superchunk albums – a cut above similarly straighforward rock albums is its replayability. Like fine cheese, these records tend to age well, timeless pop punk trifles made to memorize and sing along to. I can’t stress enough how smooth this record goes down, how effortless and enjoyable tracks like “Crossed Wires” and “Learned to Surf” are after the 10^th, 20^th, 30^th listens. A road trip record if there ever was one, Majesty Shredding is my early guess for 2010 album I will be playing most in 2011.

Listen to all of Majesty Shredding

(Video from a show I was lucky enough to attend. Didn’t take the video though.)

7. Hadestown by Anais Mitchell

From my mid-year review, in which Hadestown was my #1 record:

“Hadestown is the soundtrack to a 22-person stage musical that toured New England. It’s a folk opera about Orpheus and Eurydice… Yet somehow it isn’t cloying or twee. Hadestown is a deliciously accessible record seemingly made for… haters, a status it achieves through dead-on, streamlined songwriting, pitch-perfect folk arrangements, and the cast – dear lord, the cast – populated with ringers like Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver), Ben Knox Miller (of The Low Anthem), the Haden Triplets (of that dog. and others), and a particularly brassy Ani DiFranco (of, you know, Ani DiFranco). Sometimes there’s nothing more ambitious than naked sincerity, and that’s part of what makes Hadestown so endearing. Mitchell herself… sounds a bit like Joanna Newsom with more county fair a less Renaissance Faire. [Like Newsom’s Milk-Eyed Mender, Hadestown is] a big, all-encompassing, soulful epic that melds the immediate with the archaic, the poetic with the accessible, and the sublime with the subterranean.”

I still feel the same way about this record, which found a smaller audience than I expected, but has left a deep impression on me and the way I consider concept albums. It’s a great folk album by an irresistible newcomer, and I can’t help but pray they take this show on the road again.

Listen to all of Hadestown

6. Here’s to Taking It Easy by Phosphorescent

Here’s to Taking It Easy is a huge fucking bummer. While the title suggests something Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker might have put out, Phosphorescent’s sound is more akin to Iron & Wine after a month off his meds. Matthew Houck’s soulful warble takes this band to a place of dark hopelessness, where even cheerful-at-first-listen tracks like opener “It’s Hard to Be Humble (When You’re from Alabama)” can’t pull themselves out of the despair of the urban lonesome: “Baby all these cities, ain’t they all starting to look all the same? / Baby all these colors and the cars and the kids and the rain?”

Here’s to Taking It Easy is a stellar piece of minimalist songwriting seemingly written for getting drunk alone in the rain. Houck is country music’s answer to Bonnie “Prince” Billy: careful and subtle fine artist first, big sloppy sack of depression second. Close second. But what elevated Here’s to Taking It Easy from a good record when I first heard it to one of the most accomplished country albums in my collection are the details. Even if you can’t typically stomach twang, I encourage you to give Taking It Easy a close listen. Listen to the way Houck manipulates the basics of the form – acoustic guitar, pedal steel, vocal harmony, twelve-bar blues – into a richly textured tapestry. Listen to the way he self-harmonizes on a song like “Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)” versus the far subtler use of the technique in “I Don’t Care If There’s Cursing,” or the piano in the latter track that you don’t even notice till a dozen listens in. Check out how the devastating closer “Los Angeles” grows from pitch-black Patterson Hood-ian dread into a huge, cinematic catharsis through key changes and choral allusions. There’s so much going on here, it’s impossible to pick all the instrumentation apart, but the artistry on display makes this a record that uplifts even as it drags you down.

Listen to all of Here’s to Taking It Easy

5. The Wild Hunt and Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird by The Tallest Man on Earth

With his sophomore album and EP, Kristian Matsson has cemented his place in the new folk canon and has done nothing to discourage all those Bob Dylan comparisons. Two of the sparest recordings of the year, both records feature only Matsson’s haunting, squawky voice and expert acoustic guitar, except for two songs: “Kids on the Run” brings in a broken-down old piano and “The Dreamer” is the only Tallest Man song to feature electric guitar. Both of these deviations are revealing, not only of how much power and grace a single instrument can wield but what an emotional change can be drawn from these subtle switch-ups. There’s nothing fancy on either of these recordings – the lyrics are mostly about growing up and wishing you were elsewhere –and there are plenty of other big-eyed dreamers strumming guitars and singing into tape recorders, but hardly anyone has Matsson’s timelessness, the acumen to craft songs like “King of Spain” and “The Dreamer,” two of the best tracks all year.

Listen to all of The Wild Hunt and Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird EP

4. High Violet by The National

You’d be hard-pressed to find something less than excellent in any of The National’s last three albums. High Violet has more of a workingman quality than 2005’s Alligator and 2007’s Boxer, tackling the mundane in ways that elevate the common – and largely unaddressed in the music industry – experiences of adulthood into high art. The National is a rational, grown-up band, and I feel like their music is aimed more at people who have their shit together than at the average hipster critic. These are guys I want to hang out with and guys I want to put in charge of the music industry – remember the Dark Was the Night compilation from last year? That was produced and assembled by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National. Although the band is most easily recognizable by Matt Berninger’s unmistakable baritone, but the band has been steadily building quite the impressive mini-orchestra, with winding strings and thundering drums giving songs like “England” and “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” an austere, classical resonance. The National hasn’t been a “fun” band since Alligator, but that’s okay. In the case of Berninger and the Dessner boys, the music is just getting better with gravitas and age.

Listen to all of High Violet

3. Lisbon by The Walkmen

Lisbon bears a palpable sense of place, though I have no idea if that place is the actual Portuguese city of Lisbon. My guess is not, unless the city of Lisbon is perpetually at dusk and is also the fog capital of the world and is also New York City. Foggy beaches, secluded New England hamlets, lonesome evenings, and flannel – that’s the setting I can’t shake. Lisbon goes down like a smooth, thick, pitch-black stout – indie rock swimming in confident resignation. The Walkmen’s sound is tough to describe – think the Velvet Underground swizzled in with some late-period Beach Boys, but not really –  but hardly any albums falls as naturally into a band’s sound as Lisbon. The guitar licks on “Woe Is Me” sound almost incidental, brushed off while they were thinking of something else, or hammered on like makeshift steel drums. “Stranded” is my favorite song by this band, a rock song in name only that I think would feel more at home in a cathedral or a New Orleans funeral march. To me, Lisbon serves as a counterpoint to my #4 record, The National’s High Violet: both are perceptive, brooding masterpieces that take place mostly within the obsessive heads of their characters; they diverge at the difference between how kids and adults see the world.

Listen to all of Lisbon

2. Body Talk by Robyn

Objectively, I can’t believe I like, much less love Robyn’s music. On the surface, it’s the kind of heavily produced, radio-and-club-friendly dance pop I often despise. I’ve heard more than one person call her a Lady Gaga rip-off. Disregarding the fact that Robyn’s been around an awful lot longer than Gaga, that comment isn’t a stretch if one is only giving Robyn a cursory listen.

But holy Jesus mother of Jesus, does she pull this sound off.

Robyn released three Body Talk EP’s this year and combined most of those EP tracks on this album, which dropped in December alongside the third volume. I loved listening to the EP’s in order and waiting for the next one. They were just the right size for the type of sugar-and-arsenic-laced dance music they contained, and you really got to know the ins and outs of a handful of tracks before the next wave was released.

The album itself, which reorders the EP tracks and cuts a few of my favorites (where the hell is “Cry When You Get Older”?), is the only misstep in what is otherwise a perfect pop symphony. Perhaps best of all is Robyn’s intuition of when to be a goofball (“U Should Know Better” featuring Snoop Dogg), a badass (“Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do”), a sensitive soul (“Dancing On My Own”) or a sage telling it like it is (“Call Your Girlfriend”). Those last two tracks are two of the most infectious, impeccably produced pop songs I’ve ever come across, but all three EP’s share a rare continuity of personality; what could have read as mugging for attention in lesser hands, Robyn’s various moods and personas work together to form a complex character, the lamenting “Fembot” who’s equal parts hot and cold.

Listen to all of the Body Talk album, plus some additional tracks from the EP’s

(Video is a borderline NSFW)

1. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West

Yep. I know. I didn’t want it to be this good either, guys. Don’t kill the messenger.

I struggled to figure out exactly what to say about Twisted Fantasy that doesn’t sound rote and populist. I could talk about West’s very public redemption arc, from underground nerd-rap prodigy to mainstream darling to self-absorbed bad boy to, finally, troubled narcissist accepting of his own shortcomings but making no apologies. I could talk about Gil Scott-Heron and the Chicago connection, the album as a love letter to music itself, a blur of every genre, or the album as a meditation on right and wrong, religion, fiction, and fantasy. But the truth is, if it existed in a vacuum, Twisted Fantasy would still be perfect. Everything about it works and everything that you need to enjoy it is contained within it: from West’s deadbeat-with-a-heart-of-gold persona to the spitfire lyrics, the samples, the ultra-slick production, and the guest stars, but most of all – and I unfortunately find this far rarer in hip-hop than in other genres – the fact that it requires consideration as a complete album. The devastating Chris Rock bit at the end of “Blame Game” plays on your expectation of comedy, making the pseudo-voyeuristic lead-up to the finale all the more emotionally crushing. “All of the Lights,” “Monster,” and “POWER” are all killer tracks, blustery, egomaniacal statements of purpose, but it’s not until they’re musically referenced in the heartbreaking, Justin Vernon-driven “Lost in the World” that they really resonate, that the whole epic cycle of sex and regret reveals itself for what it truly is: a great tragedy. Twisted Fantasy ends with a Scott-Heron sample called “Who Will Survive in America,” a short, vitriolic call to action by the godfather of rap, trailing off into minimal applause. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you learn to appreciate Kanye West: see the show as a show, the con as a con, and just enjoy the stage presence of – and god help me for saying this – an actual artistic genius.

Listen to all of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Thus concludes my best of the year list, as usual, at the end of January. Thanks for reading, guys. See you in (February of) 2011!

15. The Monitor by Titus Andronicus

There’s no shortage of ambition in the oft-overreaching subgenre of hardcore punk. Two out of three heavy records are 180-minute historical concept epics about the American Revolution or the Dark Ages or samurai killing god with black katanas made of menstrual blood, and rarely does a band approach such an album conceit with Titus Andronicus’s, shall we say, don’t-give-a-fuck-itude. The much-talked-about Civil War thing on The Monitor is barely there, thankfully, serving only as a loose allegory for singer/songwriter Patrick Stickle’s own internal demons and conflicted relationship with his home state of New Jersey. The music is straightforward hardcore punk in the vein of The Replacements, but the vocals and lyrics have a blunter, more emotional heartland grit, rife with Springsteen references and a few moments I could have sworn featured Conor Oberst from 1998. Big, loud, and long, The Monitor is an ingeniously simple take on the complex topic of alienation from one’s home; says Stickle on “A More Perfect Union”: “Because where I’m going to now, no one can ever hurt me / Where the well of human hatred is shallow and dry / No, I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey / Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die.”

I should also mention that Stickle looks uncannily like a tall Peter Dinklage.

Listen to all of The Monitor

14. Marnie Stern by Marnie Stern

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Stern is an unbelievable guitar player. There are licks on this and on her other records that will make you feel like you’re hearing rock music for the first time. As someone who tires quickly of guitar pyrotechnics of the non-Dinosaur Jr. variety, I was surprised by how imminently listenable Stern’s psychedelic jamming and shrill vocals are. Marnie Stern is more focused than her previous records, with less fuzzy, proggy bullshit and more emotion, structure, and flow. There are even some comprehensible lyrics, although the albums best track (and I think Stern’s best ever), “For Ash,” is a breathless rush of shrieking adrenaline with nary a syllable that I can understand. At its artiest, Marnie Stern calls to mind the stadium indie rock of bands like Mew, and at its most traditional (the standout ballad “Transparency Is the New Mystery”) a more rocking Blonde Redhead. Stern has never been short on talent and ambition, and her latest is one of those rare occasions in which an artist’s most accessible album is also her best.

Listen to all of Marnie Stern

13. So Runs the World Away by Josh Ritter

Of all the albums on this list, this is the one you probably haven’t heard that I most desperately want you to hear. Ritter is a folk singer in name only, and So Runs the World Away is the most literary and operatic record in his stellar career. Different tracks evoke different genres, not just in terms of music but in terms of fiction. Ritter talks a lot about western literature in interviews, and his bookishness is clear here, with tracks reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s novels, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism, and the wry humor of Mark Twain. From my initial review in May:

“[So Runs the World Away] comes together as a thinking man’s album, an album man’s album, the whole rattling machine far greater than the sum of its parts. Heard individually, we have thirteen unrelated tales of sorrow, mystery, humanity, and surprising violence, but as a whole, it’s a subtle epic.”

A little purple, yes, but I 100% believe this to be true: if you’re not listening to Josh Ritter now, you’re going to feel really dumb in 40 years.  I’m sure there were lots of people around in the 1960s who weren’t paying attention to Bob Dylan, or perhaps more aptly, a lot of people in the 1910s who weren’t paying attention to James Joyce.

Listen to all of So Runs the World Away

12. I Will Be by Dum Dum Girls

If you want me to like a band before I’ve even heard them, describe them as a fuzzed-out, lo-fi 60s girl group. I Will Be was exactly the album I wanted when I wanted it, a noisy, harmonic blend of dirt and shine – Ronnie Spector by way of Joey Ramone – like something the burnouts on Freaks and Geeks would have made out to. These songs are short, catchy, grimily seductive, and surprisingly sweet, a pitch-perfect ode to youth and entitlement that deserves a place alongside London Calling and Exile on Main St. in the collection of any self-respecting irresponsible teenager. It’s the kind of record I wish I had on vinyl. God, come to think of it, it’s the kind of record that justifies the continued existence of vinyl, full stop.

Listen to all of I Will Be

11. Together by The New Pornographers

A.C. Newman and company haven’t changed a lot since 2000’s New Pornos debut/pop masterpiece Mass Romantic; five records in, their sound is only more polished and purposeful, culminating in Together, the latest product of a well-oiled hook-producing machine. It’s another in a string of basically untouchable albums from a collective of basically untouchable indie rock royals – A.C. Newman of Zumpano, Dan Bejar of Destroyer, and Neko Case of Neko Case – a lush and sunny foot-tapper full of ringing guitars, reverberating harmonies, and uplifting choruses. No, there isn’t a lot of progress in sound from album to album (though Together is a little more cheerful than 2007’s Challengers) but I for one adore the reliability of this band. They’ve been making the same album for a decade, but goddamn – when it’s this good of an album, what’s there to complain about?

Listen to all of Challengers

Next time: The top 10! All 10 of them! In January! Yeah!

20. Contra by Vampire Weekend

I’ve been listening to Contra for so long, it hardly feels like it was released this year. Yes, a lot of the shimmer and shine from January has worn down and, I’ve heard “Giving Up the Gun” and “California English” so many times I could probably never hear them again and reproduce every note from memory. I’m a little sick of Contra, to be honest. But hey, my own weariness hardly diminishes what an achievement this record is, a sophomore album that not only surpassed that overhyped debut in every way, but actually justified it. I personally needed to see the progression from douchey buzz band to artists, from purveyors of loosely-composed privilege-pop to substance-makers.

I should also mention that Contra is still heavily influenced by world music, particularly Caribbean and African instrumentation, and it is somehow also the whitest album ever produced. The band’s Iranian multi-instrumentalist and co-songwriter Rostam Batmanglij is now white by association. Are you a person of color who listened to Contra in 2010? You are now white. You may pick up your rewards card at the nearest Tommy Hilfiger retailer.

Listen to all of Contra

19. The Fool by Warpaint

The Fool is a minimalist venture into moody indie rock, a shoegazy wallow in the New Wave mudpit. This is ground well-trod by Siouxsie and the Banshees and Depeche Mode two decades ago, but Warpaint brings more to the table than retro charm and a bunch of hot girls (Wristcutters actress/giant crush/queen of killer haircuts Shannyn Sossamon was their original drummer, and her sister Jenny Lee Linberg still contributes bass and vocals); this long-gestating debut is surprisingly textured, with droning drum machines and vocal rounds stacking atop one another as songs progress. See album standout “Undertow,” which opens with a simple guitar riff, bringing in drums and a gentle harmony, and ending up a multi-tracked dance tune with overlapping hooks and discordant guitars licking off in every direction. There’s a bit of discord and uneasiness to the record as a whole, resulting in a pre-produced, almost tribal feel to certain songs — “Composure” and “Bees” come to mind — and a definitive, hypnotic drone that ties the whole thing together. It’s easy to space out listening to The Fool, and sometimes that’s the mark of fine songwriting — tracks so subtly enchanting you hardly notice they’re there.

Listen to all of The Fool

18. Treats by Sleigh Bells

Treats is a strange record that unsurprisingly didn’t hold up to my initial freak out. However, with the exception of “Rill Rill” which we’ll get to in a second, it is a shockingly consistent piece of production. Say what you will about the dumbass lyrics, the abrasive aesthetic, or the cutesy-poo rhyming of singer Alexis Krauss, no band this year put forth as singular an effort as Sleigh Bells. Treats is less an album than a mission statement, a commitment to rock really, really loudly, and with the volume up it is an experience unlike any other I had this year – like being dipped in a big sludgy vat of mosh-pit sweat and then beaten unconscious by hipster cheerleaders.

Then there’s “Rill Rill,” both the best song on the album and the one song that feels totally out of place on the album. If the entire record had aped this sound and subject – think Flaming Lips and Best Coast covering “Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl” – I have no doubt it would have been my album of the year. But I almost prefer Treats as is; it’s imperfect – pretty deeply flawed, actually – but it’s innovative, it’s bold, and it’s forward-thinking. I’d much rather hear young auteurs like Krauss and bandmate Derek E. Miller craft a unique and progressive noise pop record than stick to their old lines of work: Miller used to play guitar for Poison the Well, one of the worst bands I’ve ever heard, and Krauss had a gig with Nickelodeon Magazine and a pop group called Rubyblue. However you feel about Sleigh Bells, surely you can agree that Treats is at least a step in the right direction.

Listen to all of Treats

17. Weathervanes by Freelance Whales

Sufjan Stevens bummed a lot of us out this year, but fret not, fans of ethereal, sensitive, gorgeously orchestrated chamber pop: Weathervanes is your consolation prize. The debut from Freelance Whales gives us everything Mr. Stevens withheld this year – an orchestra of baroque instruments, soothing harmonies and plentiful imagery, and a gentle earnestness that manages to be whimsical without crossing into cloying. That said, it’s a debut album, crowded and overreaching in places, thin on production in others, but I heard few records this year as sincere and personal as this one, and no debut except Janelle Monae’s was more promising of ambitious ideas to come. Count me in for the long haul.

Listen to all of Weathervanes

16. Transference by Spoon

In The A.V. Club‘s A.V. Talk special “The Year in Music 2010″, Steve Hyden says posits that Spoon might be appreciated more if they pulled a Superchunk: “Every two or three years [Spoon] put[s] out a really good record, and they’ve reached a point where people just expect it,” says Hyden, “and I think if we had to wait another nine years for another Spoon album I think they would get the proper adoration they deserve.” I think he’s on to something there; Transference is about equal in greatness to 2007′s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and 2005′s Gimme Fiction but suffers from proximity. Spoon records are always going to be pretty awesome, but when we’ve barely had time to digest their last masterpiece — hell, Gimme Fiction and 2002′s starmaking Kill the Moonlight are still in heavy rotation for me — it’s hard to truly appreciate their new one.

Transference has plenty going for it in its own right. There’s the usual funky bass lines and Britt Daniels’ unmistakable monotone-to-falsetto vocal stylings, but Transference trades Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘s freewheeling fun for experimentation. “Is Love Forever?” is a disjointed, woozy standout, a mashup between vocals and instruments of two different songs that only occasionally sync up.  “Goodnight Laura” finds Daniels exploring piano ballads, and the schizophrenic, keyboard-happy “Nobody Gets Me But You” switches directions every time you think you have a grip on where it’s headed. Singles like “Got Nuffin’” and “Written in Reverse” benefit less from Spoon’s new-found deconstructionism, but it’s another solid album start to finish. Let’s just hope the band doesn’t have to disappear for a decade to follow it up.

Listen to all of Transference

Tune in next time for #11-15. I won’t give you any hints, but if you Monitor the blog closely I Will Be very pleased. Otherwise, we’ll have to have a Stern conversation Together. See you then!

Before we kick off the official list, I want to alert you all to a service I use every day that I think a lot of music lovers should know about. Grooveshark is a free streaming music player that allows you to save songs to a library, create on-the-go playlists, save and edit playlists, create custom radio stations, and best of all, social network. Other users can follow you, see what you’ve been listening to, and subscribe to your playlists. I love Grooveshark. The song selection is huge — everything I wanted to hear in the last 6 months except 1 record is available on Grooveshark, including many albums before they hit stores. It’s my iTunes, Pandora, and LastFM rolled into one. It’s perfect for listening to at work, and if you have an Android, a crazy-cheap app lets you take it with you. In no way am I affiliated with Grooveshark, but I’m a big fan and I understand that it only gets better the more people are using it regularly.

Also, it’s free. Did I mention it’s free?

And since it’s free and ridiculously easy to use, I’m going to post the sample tracks to a Grooveshark playlist. The link will be at the ends of these posts. My Grooveshark username is moveabletype if you would like to follow me, and you can subscribe to my Best of 2010 playlist, which I will be updating with every new post.

Now on to the list!

Albums #21-25

25. Play It Strange by The Fresh and Onlys

Was this the year of California surfer/stoner bands or what? Between these guys, Best Coast, Wavves, and Dum Dum Girls, I think the market on beaches and sunshine and John Phillips is officially cornered. Not that I’m complaining – I did buy all four of those records, plus Beach Boys’ Endless Summer – since the trend inspired a back-to-the-basics jammer like this one. There’s nothing complicated here. Play It Strange is a somewhat dark 60s folk record, fun and desperate, with brief tracks, jangling guitar, and a strong lyrical through-line about information-age burnout and youthful assholery. If your life currently lacks tambourine and songs with titles like “All Shook Up” and “Summer of Love,” Play It Strange is likely to hit the spot.

Listen to “Waterfall” from Play It Strange

24. Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus

I hated this record the first time I listened to it. Hated it. Resembling a hip hop record without any actual hip hop, Cosmogramma seemed insufferably pretentious, a house record for the Banksy set or people who want to talk to me about experimental cinema at parties. Fucking hated it. It didn’t help that Flying Lotus wears a mask and abbreviates his name “FlyLo,” like J-Lo but with flies.

But a strange thing happened when I gave Cosmogramma a second chance. I started to see the album not in terms of something to be enjoyed but to be appreciated. Flying Lotus clearly has some similarities to his dubstep contemporary Burial, and although this is no Untrue, the craftsmanship and scope on display is more than admirable. Once I began to hear Cosmogramma as a whole rather than individual tracks, to immerse myself in the depth and breadth of vision at work here – and, yes, to drink a lot of scotch by myself – I could see how all the astrological outer space shit actually worked, how the jazz and vocoders and drum machines and drones fit together in no logical way, and yet they fit. The important thing is that the pieces do fit, and in Cosmogramma the beauty is in the connections, the little instrumental callbacks to earlier tracks, variations in an extraordinarily complex pattern, and the subtle moments that indicate something unknowably large coming through. I’m still not calling him FlyLo though.

Listen to all of Cosmogramma

23. Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle

I know you haven’t seen my whole list yet, but it is shockingly low on country albums. It just wasn’t a very interesting year for innovation in country (it was a very, very good year for making money in country; ask Taylor Swift), and while everyone was pooping their Pampers over Jamey Johnson’s outlaw alcoholism, Justin Townes Earle was quietly living up to his namesakes; he is, after all, eponymous of his legendary father Steve Earle and Steve’s even-more-legendary pal Townes Van Zandt. Harlem River Blues is a quietly revolutionary country album for Earle, who has up till now had trouble refining his sound. Forgoing both the belligerent critic-baiting of the Drive-By Truckers and Merle Haggard-lite ramblings of Jamey Johnson, Earle sounds like just about the most clean-cut Christian boy to ever ride a hobo train to New York, and he would like to sing you a song about it. For an album that opens with a title track about suicide and for a singer whose recent past has been rife with drug abuse and stints in rehab, Harlem River Blues is surprisingly wholesome, telling tales of drifters and lovers with a pedal steel and stand-up bass and not much else. Unlike his father’s, Earle’s voice is pleasant but unremarkable, and his songs will offend no one and probably attract fans of old school country, outlaw country, and even top 40 country. If Harlem River Blues were your prom date, you would bring him to meet your parents in a very charming, ill-fitting hand-me-down suit, and he would remind them of themselves when they were his age, all wide-eyed and good-hearted and innocent, which he is, but he’ll also go down on you in the backseat and give you whiskey out of a flask, and you’ll realize that he’s that rarity that gives you exactly what you didn’t know you wanted in a package that even your parents will approve of.

In short, Harlem River Blues will perform cunnilingus on you in a limousine.

Listen to all of Harlem River Blues

22. Odd Blood by Yeasayer

Does anyone like the first track on Odd Blood? “The Children” is a repulsive song misguided from its very inception, like Rosemary’s baby – the kind of gag-inducing electro-drivel which, upon hearing again later, makes you question whether the album that contained it could actually be any good to begin with. Fortunately, Yeasayer redeems itself mere minutes later with “Ambling Alp,” the band’s best song ever and one of the best tracks of the year. Most of the rest of Odd Blood is similar to “Ambling Alp”: big, dumb disco hits with winkingly inept production that would be embarrassing if it weren’t so much goofy fun. The pleasure of listening to Yeasayer is similar to the pleasure of listening to, say, the soundtrack to an 8-bit video game you used to love. It isn’t that songs like “O.N.E.” and “I Remember” are all that good, they’re just so unapologetically dorky and old-fashioned that they’re impossible to resist. Having been traumatized by a Yeasayer live show a few years back, my faith in this band’s ability to drop a great album on purpose is very slight, but Odd Blood works somehow, like a Uwe Boll movie or an episode of Jersey Shore; it’s so bad it’s awesome.

Listen to all of Odd Blood

21. Total Life Forever by Foals

Like Franz Ferdinand before them, Foals traffic in driving, danceable rock and roll, and when the hooks come, they come big and stay for a while. Total Life Forever is a brooding britpop record with a sense of humor, slickly produced and archly self-aware. It’s this latter quality that differentiates Foals from their transatlantic contemporaries, though Win Butler comparisons are sure to be in no short supply. Singer Yannis Philippakis recalls Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson’s stately Scottish enunciation, minus the sad-sack whine, and he’s backed up by big, echoing, world-music-inspired production. This is the indie pop record of choice for those of us who can shut up about the fucking Arcade Fire for ten minutes.

Listen to all of Total Life Forever

All tracks from the Best of 2010 posts can be found here, including all of Wednesday’s Honorable Mentions.

Stay tuned for #16-20. Sleigh Bells will be here in time for Christmas!

Before we get started with the big list proper, today’s column will be about what didn’t make the list. We’ll talk about some honorable mentions that aren’t in my top 25 but are still very much worth hearing, as well as some notable omissions, thoughts on records that seem to be popping up on everyone else’s list except my own. Here we go!

Honorable Mentions

The Big To-Do by Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers have a lot of records, all of them good to amazing. The Big To-Do is good. It feels like a transitional album; new singer Shonna Tucker is still finding her range and honing her songwriting, and the delicate equilibrium between vocalists/songwriters/guitar-heroes Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley sounds like it’s tipping in Hood’s favor, so the songs lean toward the weird and rambling, the hyper-literate and desperate. It’s a surprisingly mellow album for a follow-up to 2008’s ferocious, near-perfect Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, and there are a number of new classics here, like “This Fucking Job” and the Cooley-helmed “Birthday Boy.” The Big To-Do is essential listening for fans of the band, but this isn’t the place to start if you’re new to the Truckers’ gritty Southern rock.

The Big Black and the Blue by First Aid Kit

This Swedish folk duo gives us a lot to be excited about. They made their name with a pair of terrific and tasteful covers, Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” and Fever Ray’s “When I Grow Up.” The Big Black doesn’t quite cohere as an album, but that shouldn’t diminish how great some of the individual tracks are (“Hard Believer” in particular is a harmonic miracle worthy of the Avett Brothers). Definitely a band to watch.

Romance Is Boring by Los Campesinos!

Poor Los Campesinos!, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, doomed perpetually, it seems, to releasing consistently good albums that just never quite make the impact of their more aggressive brethren. This prolific brit-punk group always offers a fun, cynical romp with big hooks, clever lyrics, and that snotty, youthful attitude we love/hate from 80s punk and asshole kids everywhere. It’s a fun, fairly brainless record with personality to spare.

Good Morning, Magpie by Murder by Death

Most folks stopped paying attention to Murder by Death when they stopped writing freak-folk songs about the apocalypse with huge cello parts and the kind of tumbling waltzes Jack Skellington might have gotten jiggy to. Their reinvention as an insurgent country act a la Drive-By Truckers was fairly catastrophic, but Good Morning, Magpie is yet another reinvention. Now they’re an unassuming bar band, cranking out some low-key jams, working in the cello when the opportunity arises. The tiny little muskrat of a lead singer Adam Turla’s voice has always been my favorite part of Murder by Death’s music, a low and bold Johnny Cash bass, and here he sounds like he’s having fun for the first time. And holy buckets, but “Foxglove” is a great track.

Heaven Is Whenever by the Hold Steady

It pains me greatly that this record didn’t make my list. The Hold Steady is one of my favorite bands, and I wanted to love this album so much. And it’s a pretty good album, just not great. There isn’t much that hasn’t already been said about Heaven Is Whenever. “The Weekenders” and “Hurricane J” are incredible songs. They can’t all be winners, right?

Swanlights by Antony and the Johnsons

I think Antony is an absolute genius. I think he is a timeless singer and songwriter who we may not fully appreciate until after he’s gone. I think he has one of the most haunting voices our generation has known, and some of his songs literally give me chills to hear. That said, I cannot listen to an entire Antony and the Johnsons album. What starts out beautiful and ghostlike just becomes grating, like extremely high-pitched white noise. But I love Antony, and I’ve attempted to get through every album he’s made, and Swanlights may be his most beautiful work yet. I just… ugh. Can’t do it.

Work by Shout Out Louds

Back in February, I was confident that Work would make my top 20, if not my top 10. Maybe it was because I was unemployed and anything called “Work” sounded amazing on principle, or maybe it was because winter passed and I cheered up and I no longer felt the need to soak in a whirlpool of Scandinavian depression, but for whatever reason, Work didn’t hold up. I still think it’s a good album – and not just good songs, an actually good, coherent album that ebbs and flows in all the right places, lyrically clever with guitar and piano work that reminds me of Challengers-era New Pornos – and in other years this might have been higher up on the list. And who knows? Now that it’s minus seven with the windchill again, Work might find its way back to heavy rotation.

Dishonorable Mentions

This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem

I just don’t get LCD Soundsystem. I think they’re fine. I liked “Dance Yrself Clean,” and I would have liked it more if it were five minutes shorter. James Mercer just doesn’t do it for me. And believe me, I’ve tried. Like Mad Men, I have studied up and immersed myself and looked at This Is Happening from a technical perspective and an entertainment perspective, and I just don’t get the hype. What am I missing here?

The Suburbs by Arcade Fire

I get Arcade Fire, I just don’t like them. They play a particular type of music very well; it’s just not a kind of music I enjoy. I find them precious and melodramatic, sentimental and not particularly talented when it comes to writing lyrics. They’re the musical equivalent of an Oliver Stone movie: ham-fisted moralizers with a big, blockbuster sound, a kick of fury, and not very much to signify.

Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter

I would listen to “Desire Lines” on repeat for a year and a half. That is the only Deerhunter song I have liked so far. Maybe it’s the rabid fans, maybe it’s the hype, maybe I just have terrible taste, but I have not been able to bring myself to give a shit about Deerhunter. Sorry.

King of the Beach by Wavves

I think I would like this better if I lived in LA and smoked a lot of weed and had never heard music before. But I live in Chicago, and I’m relatively sober, and it sounds to me like somebody isn’t very good at singing or playing guitar.

The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens

What? No, seriously, someone explain this record to me. Someone said if you’re familiar with the work of schizophrenic outsider artist Royal Robertson, it all comes together. Fuck that. If I wanted pretentious, pseudo-mystical horseshit that I have to research to understand I would have watched Lost.

Next time: records I liked! Loved even! In the meantime, tell me how great LCD Soundsystem and Deerhunter are and how wrong I am. Ok, bye!

There’s a nifty piece on PW about the unique challenges and rewards of writing about music. I’ve had many of these experiences myself at this blog and AT THIS OTHER EXCELLENT BLOG WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE, and in smaller ways, talking to my friends about music, listening to my friends talk about music, trying to describe concerts and times when music changed what the world was about. It’s an odd marriage, music and journalism, music and oratory; translating a largely emotional experience into a largely cerebral medium where no clear guidelines have been drawn is no mean feat.

I listen to a lot of music, and I read a lot about music, and not once has something I read truly given me a sense of what it feels like to listen. At best, it prompts me to hear it for myself, to invest a little money and time to feel what the journalist is trying to describe, but I have yet to feel the thing itself in the writing. I heard somewhere that a writer’s job is to put together just enough details to describe a concrete thing and hope that thing points to a lot of other, deeper things within the reader’s mind. After a certain point, you have to let go of your writing and let it stand on its own. But music writing is trickier than that, to me at least, because music is usually not a concrete thing. It’s ethereal. At it’s best and rarest, it’s liminal. The music can point to those deeper things, but short of giving my reader a big lists of songs and saying “Listen to these things because they’re beautiful” (which I do from time to time), music journalism cannot do that; it’s one step further removed. I am writing a thing (a column) that points to a thing (a song) that points to a thing (the subject of the song) that points to the imaginary things in the listener which may or may not have anything to do with the imaginary things in me.

There are ways to get around it. In the PW article, writers talk about fiction or nonfiction authors they emulate in their own music journalism, from Roger Ebert to James Joyce. There’s something to be said for projecting a narrative onto music reviews, something I try to do at Awkward World, but personal narration can only take you so far. The natural inclination is to shift the focus from the music to yourself, which is all well and good if you have an actual story to tell, but it’s more often the case that I want to share the importance of a particular song or artist and narration is the simplest method of conveyance. It can only take you so far.

So today, I’m going to let better music writers than me do the talking. Here’s a little compendium of music writers and writing that I love. This is what I want to do. This is, I hope, what you like to read.

Nathan Rabin – The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club is my go-to source for media journalism. If I want a record review, a movie review, or just to read something interesting and hilarious, this is where I go. My favorite A.V. Club contributor is head writer Nathan Rabin, something of an eccentric nebbish who knows more about hip-hop than any Jew has a right to know. He’s also a brilliant, sardonic writer who often reminds me of David Sedaris. He heads several recurring features at the A.V. Club like the country music crash-course “Nashville or Bust” and the archly ironic retrospective “THEN! That’s What They Called Music.” He also participates in a number of A.V. Club’s more general features that deal with music, movies, books, and TV in roughly equal amounts: “Inventory,” “A.V. Talk,” “Gateways to Geekery,” and his phenomenal shaggy dog film feature, “My Year of Flops” (now in its third or so year).

Buy Nathan Rabin’s memoir The Big Rewind or pre-order his My Year of Flops compendium, in bookstores October 9.

Rob Sheffield — Love Is a Mix Tape

Sheffield’s first memoir, Love Is a Mix Tape, is the kind of narrative music journalism I was talking about earlier. It’s the story of a tragic time in the author’s life expressed through the songs that got him there and the songs that got him through it. As a child of the 90s, I haven’t heard many of the songs Sheffield writes about, but his account of what they did for/to him makes them powerful talismans, representing an idea larger than his life or the lives of the artists who created them. That book is about many things, but one of them is music as currency, an alternative method of communication between nervous or awkward souls. (It also introduced me to Big Star, so I have Sheffield to thank for that as well.)

Rob Sheffield has a new memoir out, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and I hear it is somewhat less gut-wrenching than his previous book. He is also a contributing editor to Rolling Stone.

Paste Magazine – Paste Samplers

Now that the only magazine I subscribe to is defunct, I feel like a retrospective is in order. This column won’t be that retrospective, but suffice it to say these guys did good work, and many of them continue to do good work in the online incarnation of Paste. The Paste writers are masters of the daily list, the pithy feature, and the objective review. Paste is almost certainly the most traditional media source I respect and regularly read, but what set them apart from most magazines in an era before the ubiquitousness of music blogs was the Paste Sampler, a consistently excellent mix CD that came with every issue. Unlike, say, Rolling Stone or Spin, Paste put the actual subjects – the songs – front and center, rather than promoting the writing, the stars, or the cult of personality surrounding the magazine. The result never became the cultural phenomenon I wish it had, but there was an integrity Paste’s philosophy that I rarely see. You bought Paste for the songs. You bought Paste to read what the experts thought about the songs, then listen to the same songs and decide for yourself. I never heard a Paste Sampler on which every song was amazing and new, but I never heard a Paste Sampler on which at least 5 or 6 songs weren’t amazing or new, and that really was an achievement.

Time will tell what happens to the online version of Paste, whether pay subscriptions will continue and what, if any, content will be available for free, but right now Paste is still one of the most interesting and informative sources of music on the web.

Largehearted Boy – Book Notes

Largehearted Boy, the gold standard for music and literature blogging, has a different approach to using art to describe art. The Book Notes series asks authors to create an audio playlist for their book; it’s up to the author to determine what that means. Sometimes they highlight songs that inspired the book, sometimes songs that a particular character might like, sometimes songs from the book’s historical era. Book Notes uses music to explain (or at least connote) literature, making the cerebral ethereal instead of the other way around.

You should read some more LHB features and follow him on Twitter: @largeheartedboy

Now I want to hear from you guys. What kind of music writing do you like to read? What works for you and what doesn’t? What blogs or magazines should I and others be reading? Besides love of rock and roll, why write about rock and roll?

Sometimes when it’s the end of the month and I have some credits left on Emusic, I do foolish things. This is how I came to own Infinite Arms, the several-months-old, critically acclaimed LP by Band of Horses. Even though I knew perfectly well that I didn’t like either of their old albums, I thought this one was going to be different. And it is different. Band of Horses are no longer the most inoffensively bland band in indie rock. They’re basically the Eagles now, which is to say the most sentimental, maudlin, and disingenuous band in indie rock.

And I’ll be honest; I kind of miss the inoffensive blandness. They were a mediocre band with two good songs and crazy-pants success, but sometimes you have a hankering for a sound like theirs, like when you need to concentrate on writing or tamp down an erection. Every genre has its wildly popular, inoffensively bland band with two good songs – your Black Eyed Peas, and your Taylor Swifts, and your HIMs, and your etc. – because they serve a specific purpose, which is to give fans and better bands something to unite in opposition to.

I should mention that a lot of critics – notably the fine folks over at Paste Magazine – really dig Infinite Arms, but I should also mention that I rarely, if ever, write about albums I don’t like. That usually feels too easy. It’s much more fun to introduce people to new bands or new classics, to add positivity to the discussion rather than rag on records that are already getting ragged on by everybody else. But nobody is really ragging on Band of Horses and they sound like the fucking Eagles now, so Decemberists, congratulations, the mantle for least interesting indie band has been passed to you. (Oh, whatever, hipsters. Make Picaresque again, then we’ll talk.)

Here are Band of Horses’ two good songs, neither of which are on Infinite Arms:

A Funeral

Our Swords

All of Infinite Arms sounds like a brown paper bag with some toast in it. This song is the slice of toast with a small amount of margarine on it:

Neighbor

1 through 5, as promised. And yes, a week does = a couple of days. And on an unrelated note, did you know that Sufjan Stevens released a surprise EP today? I have heard it described both as “Kind of awesome” and “like listening to someone masturbate to a video of themselves masturbating to a video of themselves.” You can buy it or stream it for free on his website. Neat!

5. The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monae

From GChat:

me:  meh

i have no idea what to say about janelle monae

i’m burned out on these…

Rachel:  “boner boner boner boner boner boner oh my god she can sing? boner boner boner boner this is better than outkast could ever hope to be? boner boner boner boner I wonder if there’s a youtube video that will teach me how to dance like that….”

Dance or Die (feat. Saul Williams)



4. I Will Be by Dum Dum Girls

Maybe instead of the year of the concept album 2010 will go down as the year of dumb-looking white girls on album covers. (See entry #9) I Will Be is, of course, far from dumb, a deceptively subtle 60s girl group throwback from four of the wilier ladies in aughts indie. As a debut record from a new talent, it’s a manifesto on sex, female identity, and general David Lynch-ian badassery. But taken as part of the larger canon and the direction the scene appears to be heading, it’s a fucking role model. In 2010 alone, we’ve got Best Coast releasing basically this same record and all these surprisingly innovative pop divas coming out of the woodwork on Lady Gaga’s heels and what I want, what I crave is a post-feminist scene leader to wrangle in all the warring ideologies and just make a record about screwing and feeling everything. And that record is this record. It’s really good. More people should listen to it.

Jail La La

3. Together by the New Pornographers

Okay, I’m no longer touting that Together is the New Pornos’ best album. Twin Cinema is totally their best album. But Together is really, really good nevertheless, and it chugs along at a similar pace to Twin Cinema‘s, bouncing between feathery A.C. Newman anthems and swirly Neko Case ballads and whatever those things are that Dan Bejar’s doing. It’s a fun and effortless listen, and another home run from everyone’s favorite power pop supergroup.

Crash Years

2. High Violet by The National

One has to appreciate a band that reinvents itself with every album while still maintaining the emotional core that differentiates a body of work from a couple of CDs. Part of what was so charming about 2007’s Boxer was the mental disconnect between the somber, staccato music and the subject matter of the songs – twentysomethings fucking around in the big city, trying to impress girls and feel important. Boxer was as stoic a manifesto to youth as anything by Joy Division, but High Violet is decidedly adult through and through. This is a record about the joys and terrors of fatherhood, faith, and learning one’s place in the larger world. Yes, there are also songs about killer bees and zombies, but Serious The National is always Serious, and their sheer dedication to whatever subject they choose is really what makes this band such a consistent joy to follow.

Terrible Love

1. Hadestown by Anais Mitchell

I’d like to refer you to the note I posted last week about how to write a great concept album, which was originally written to be part of this review. Hadestown is a great concept album; might even be the great concept album, the one that transcends literati, fans of good music, fans of folk music, and devotees of big, goofy musical numbers. If at least two of those sound terrible to you, you’re not alone. Let me be very clear: Hadestown is the soundtrack to a 22-person stage musical that toured New England. It’s a folk opera about Orpheus and Eurydice. It isn’t a concept album in the way that The ArchAndroid and The Monitor are concept albums, which is to say that the story is way, way on the backburner and basically inessential. This is a musical. There’s an “I Wish” song and an aria and characters and dialogue and everything.

Yet somehow it isn’t cloying or twee. Hadestown is a deliciously accessible record seemingly made for the above-described haters, a status it achieves through dead-on, streamlined songwriting, pitch-perfect folk arrangements, and the cast – dear lord, the cast – populated with ringers like Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver), Ben Knox Miller (of The Low Anthem), the Haden Triplets (of that dog. and others), and a particularly brassy Ani DiFranco (of, you know, Ani DiFranco). Sometimes there’s nothing more ambitious than naked sincerity, and that’s part of what makes Hadestown so endearing. Mitchell herself (who was completely off my radar before this record) sounds a bit like Joanna Newsom with more county fair a less Renaissance Faire. And in a way, that’s exactly what this is, the record that a lot of Newsom fans have been longing for since Milk-Eyed Mender: a big, all-encompassing, soulful epic that melds the immediate with the archaic, the poetic with the accessible, and the sublime with the subterranean.

Wait for Me (feat. Ben Knox Miller and Justin Vernon)

Why We Build the Wall (feat. Greg Brown)