5. Beach House
Beach House seem to grow with each album, and this year's Teen Dream was a marvel. Lo-fi organ, plucked guitar - the basic elements rarely seem to change very much, but the recipe always seems to work. On one level, it sounds like something from a well-crafted French mixtape. But those fibrous, wire-drawn guitars haunt the ear, with a twang that reminds me of Town and Country. And there is something inescapably dolorous about the voice of Victoria Legrand. Let's see what she can do with a phone book.
4. Flying Lotus
I remember listening to Cosmogramma late at night in the country with the windows down in my car, and thinking - woah, THIS is the album for late-night driving. Which it is. Or one of them, at least. Deeper than Los Angeles and more finely honed, this was an album that seemed to offer more the more you listened. Miracles of purified pop such as MmmHmm sit alongside hushed, half-buried gems like Thom Yorke number And The World Laughs With You - a song that would be the centrepiece of most ordinary albums. There are plenty of broken beats in there too - although perhaps they sound more shattered, fractured or just smashed then anything else.
FlyLo got cross recently when he missed out on a Grammy for this album, but he has nothing to worry about - all the right people knew this was dynamite.
3. Local Natives
Gorilla Manor was for 2010 what the Fleet Foxes debut was for 2008. That this wasn't recognised more openly was one of the great disappointments of the year for me. The album sneaked out late last year, but drew wider attention upon its US release in February. Airplanes was the immediate hook - but tracks such as Cubism Dream and Stranger Things had a bewitching beauty to them that screamed of greatness. Attacked by some for sounding too much like too many other bands, they need to shed their influences - but have already landed one of the year's killer albums.
2. Twin Shadow
If Morrissey started listening to Junior Boys, it's possible this is the sort of record he would produce. Twin Shadow's George Lewis Jr unleashed Forget on the world this year like a man letting off a bomb. And when the bomb went off, it sounded like the 80s. At its best, utterly unbeatable, although the record is one of peaks and troughs. But what a talent - and God only knows what he could go on to achieve.
1. Oneohtrix Point Never
It's not an obvious thought, but it's increasingly becoming clear that Daniel Lopatin is this generation's answer to Aphex Twin. Musically, it's not really a fair comparison, but he is starting to look like the figurehead of modern electronic music - or even perhaps its saviour. When Rifts dropped last year, it was like a new civilisation had been uncovered, and the people in it all listened to Boards of Canada. This year, with Returnal, it felt like we had been given a secret glimpse of what the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey might have listened to when they were off duty. Like so much great music today, it borrows from the past to take us somehow one step closer to the future. Deep, and mouthwateringly brilliant.
No comments:
Post a Comment