So many critics have their year's best and worst lists, but I'm no critic, and most year end lists are a pathetic slop of opinionated, sometimes skewed views on mostly the same selected group of releases that have everyone talking. I haven't heard all the albums on all of these year end lists, and my opinion is just as worthy as the next person, so this is simply a list of my personal favorite albums of the year and why.(11. Jack Johnson, "To The Sea": I know I said 10 favorite albums, but this one was too good to leave off, but I still liked everything ahead of it slightly better).
10. Cee Lo Green, "The Lady Killer":
With the year's catchiest and possibly most controversial single "F**k You" as well as a string of other head bobbing pop hits, "The Lady Killer" was the definitive R&B album of the year. The "Saturday Night Fever"-ish "Bright Lights Bigger City" opens the album with a bang, and when most R&B is stale or jumping the shark in auto-tune overtones, this had to be one of the ballsiest and soulful LP's of the year.
9. Band of Horses, "Infinite Arms":
The album's lead single "Laredo" has one of the best and catchiest riffs of the year, and the perfect addition to any road trip mix tape, along with another standout track "On My Way Back Home". The opening track "Factory" sounds like a"Soft Bulletin" Flaming Lips b-side, and I can guarantee is the most striking and powerful coupling of "An hour later" with taffy candy "The Now and Laters" you'll ever hear.
8. John Legend & The Roots "Wake Up!":
What do you get when you pair the Marvin Gaye of the 2000's with the E Street Band of modern hip hop? A collection of obscure vintage soul covers that are given new lives of their own in a prolific time. The early 70's Bill Withers Vietnam epic "I Can't Write Left Handed" is the album's defining moment in my opinion, highlighting Legend's and the Roots' most powerful combination of performance on the album. The album's opener "Hard Times" is like a soulful Jethro Tull track, and "Shine" is an original track that closes the album beautifully blending right in with the 1970's interpretations all over the rest of the album. With overblown egos prevalent in today's music scenes, two heavyweights laid the groundwork for one of the best collaborative efforts of the past decade.
7. B.O.B, "B.O.B. Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray":
Probably the best produced and executed hip hop debut since Kanye West's "The College Dropout" to me. There's no boundary between pop, rock, and hip hop on this album, and it's more impressive than Kanye's "Twisted Fantasy" in that it didn't take a nervous breakdown of Brian Wilson proportions and a period of exile to conjure up (as far as we know). It took Kanye 2 or 3 albums to get into the kind of experimental territory B.O.B. seemed to achieve effortlessly on tracks like "Don't Let Me Fall" or the biggest crossover smash of 2010 "Airplanes". "Lovelier Than You" and "Magic" are the greatest Andre 3000 songs we've never heard and it's really saying something when you don't even need a track with Eminem on the radio to move your debut album. With musical chops that don't need an elongated auto-tune experiment, as long as B.O.B. keeps doing what he's doing, he has the potential to take over where Outkast left off.
6. Mumford & Sons "Sigh No More":
This debut is filled with tracks that play out like roller coaster rides slowly building to a sudden rush of pounding folk codas which seem to be this band's identifying trait. They sound like a band plucked right from a neighborhood pub in the English countryside with brutally honest choice words, which brings a gritty honesty and beauty to this album. Never has a banjo sounded so badass and in the forefront as it does here.
5. Brandon Flowers, "Flamingo":
6. Mumford & Sons "Sigh No More":
This debut is filled with tracks that play out like roller coaster rides slowly building to a sudden rush of pounding folk codas which seem to be this band's identifying trait. They sound like a band plucked right from a neighborhood pub in the English countryside with brutally honest choice words, which brings a gritty honesty and beauty to this album. Never has a banjo sounded so badass and in the forefront as it does here.
5. Brandon Flowers, "Flamingo":
The solo debut of the Killers frontman matched up to the band's latest album "Day And Age" and easily surpassed their previous album "Sam's Town" with a distinct synth heavy sound. Some of these songs could have been top 40 hits in the 1980's, which make this collection of tunes stand out even more in the 21st century. The album opens with a haunting and honest ode to his hometown, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" and continues with the pop anthem singles "Only the Young" and "Crossfire" which showcase the songwriting skills that have made the Killers a worldwide smash. The deluxe version of the album includes some bonus tracks, one of which may be the best on the album, a modern Johnny Cash sounding storybook "The Clock Was A Tickin'". On his solo tour, as an added bonus Flowers has been reworking some of his Killers hits such as an acoustic stripped down version of their definitive track "When You Were Young" and a version of "Losing Touch" that might surpass the original. If the upcoming Killers album has any shades or leftovers of "Flamingo", then it will likely end up on similar lists at the end of 2011.
4. Eminem "Recovery":
After his disappointing comeback album "Relapse" from last year, Slim Shady released what should have been his return from a long hiatus this year with his most powerful and definitive music since "The Marshall Mathers LP". This was the year's best hip hop album front to back, as Kanye West's album was more of a genre shape-shifter. Some of the best rhymes of his career come through on the Lil' Wayne/Haddaway unlikely partnering of "No Love" and even the weakest tracks on this album run circles around most lead singles on any top 40 hip hop album of the last 5 years. Where Kanye's formula for 2010 was overexposure and making an album as close to "Dark Side Of the Moon" as hip hop can get, Eminem went back to basics. He simply had Dr. Dre and a stable of other heavy hitting producers provide the backdrop of beats so he could focus on his rap "Recovery" that took us to school with the abstract and definitive rhymes that made him one of the biggest music acts of the new millennium.
3. The Black Keys, "Brothers":
This duo is to Akron, Ohio what the White Stripes are to Detroit, Michigan. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney's latest LP follows their breakout album "Attack and Release" picking up right where that album left off. The lead single "Tighten Up" produced by Danger Mouse has all the Black Keys signatures; Auerbach's vintage blues vocals and swerving guitar licks, and Carney's ground stomping drumbeats. Other highlights of the album are the sing along "Howlin' For You", the lovey dovey "Everlasting Light", the ode to fraternal friendship "Unknown Brother" which pretty much serves as the album's title track, and the mysterious "Ten Cent Pistol". The Keys have evolved in their sound while never straying too far from their original formula. After opening shows on Pearl Jam's tour earlier in the year, they should be headlining arenas throughout the US in no time.
This duo is to Akron, Ohio what the White Stripes are to Detroit, Michigan. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney's latest LP follows their breakout album "Attack and Release" picking up right where that album left off. The lead single "Tighten Up" produced by Danger Mouse has all the Black Keys signatures; Auerbach's vintage blues vocals and swerving guitar licks, and Carney's ground stomping drumbeats. Other highlights of the album are the sing along "Howlin' For You", the lovey dovey "Everlasting Light", the ode to fraternal friendship "Unknown Brother" which pretty much serves as the album's title track, and the mysterious "Ten Cent Pistol". The Keys have evolved in their sound while never straying too far from their original formula. After opening shows on Pearl Jam's tour earlier in the year, they should be headlining arenas throughout the US in no time.
2. Kings of Leon, "Come Around Sundown":
This album didn't have a weak song on it, and blended the best elements of their previous 2 albums "Because Of The Times" and their breakout album "Only By The Night". A lot of people accused this band of selling out on their last album, which makes about as much sense as U2 selling out when they recorded "The Joshua Tree". Usually, that's how it works when a band makes a steady climb from hipster underground to top 40 radio, but that doesn't automatically diminish their music, that only means they're not churning out the same boring formula album after album. The opening track "The End," is fitting as it picks up sounding like something that they left off of "Only By The Night". The album's first single "Radioactive" is one of the only songs that had heavy rotation on the radio this year with the unconventional formula of a chorus that doubled in length to the verses. Then the album plows ahead with some of the band's best songs to date in "Mary", "The Face", and two songs that seem like a sign of things to come in "Pyro" and "Back Down South". With "Pyro", they've made a song as serious as "Sex On Fire" was tongue in cheek. And exploring their Nashville roots in "Back Down South" has conjured up a song that would be right at home at either a summer cookout or in open air stadiums. While critics poured over Arcade Fire this year, "Come Around Sundown" had the total package in what a popular rock album should sound like.
1. Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs "God Willin' And The Creek Don't Rise":
For Ray LaMontagne's fourth album, he captured a stripped down sound heavy on upright bass, lapsteel, with some banjo sprinkled in, that sounded like it was recorded in a barn...because it was recorded in a barn. The opening track "Repo Man" and the closing track "Devil's In The Jukebox" are as hard as they come on this album, and everything in between sounds like nothing else out there right now, but at the same time could have fit in being played on a freight train rolling through a mountain range at the turn of the 20th century. If you want to hear what the closest thing to the musical equivalent of a man losing his soul, it's never been captured better than on "Are We Really Through". LaMontagne brilliantly compares distant love to the current state of the musical airwaves in "Rock & Roll And Radio" and "Beg Steal or Borrow" could fit right in between "Tangerine" and "That's The Way" on "Led Zeppelin III". This album is a throwback but at the same time sounds like nothing you've ever heard before with a distinct voice that's immediately recognizable (think a softer version on Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys). With albums that keep getting better than his last, I'm sure the next Ray LaMontagne album will bring about more surprises that are just as easy on the ears as this one, maybe more so.
This album didn't have a weak song on it, and blended the best elements of their previous 2 albums "Because Of The Times" and their breakout album "Only By The Night". A lot of people accused this band of selling out on their last album, which makes about as much sense as U2 selling out when they recorded "The Joshua Tree". Usually, that's how it works when a band makes a steady climb from hipster underground to top 40 radio, but that doesn't automatically diminish their music, that only means they're not churning out the same boring formula album after album. The opening track "The End," is fitting as it picks up sounding like something that they left off of "Only By The Night". The album's first single "Radioactive" is one of the only songs that had heavy rotation on the radio this year with the unconventional formula of a chorus that doubled in length to the verses. Then the album plows ahead with some of the band's best songs to date in "Mary", "The Face", and two songs that seem like a sign of things to come in "Pyro" and "Back Down South". With "Pyro", they've made a song as serious as "Sex On Fire" was tongue in cheek. And exploring their Nashville roots in "Back Down South" has conjured up a song that would be right at home at either a summer cookout or in open air stadiums. While critics poured over Arcade Fire this year, "Come Around Sundown" had the total package in what a popular rock album should sound like.
1. Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs "God Willin' And The Creek Don't Rise":
For Ray LaMontagne's fourth album, he captured a stripped down sound heavy on upright bass, lapsteel, with some banjo sprinkled in, that sounded like it was recorded in a barn...because it was recorded in a barn. The opening track "Repo Man" and the closing track "Devil's In The Jukebox" are as hard as they come on this album, and everything in between sounds like nothing else out there right now, but at the same time could have fit in being played on a freight train rolling through a mountain range at the turn of the 20th century. If you want to hear what the closest thing to the musical equivalent of a man losing his soul, it's never been captured better than on "Are We Really Through". LaMontagne brilliantly compares distant love to the current state of the musical airwaves in "Rock & Roll And Radio" and "Beg Steal or Borrow" could fit right in between "Tangerine" and "That's The Way" on "Led Zeppelin III". This album is a throwback but at the same time sounds like nothing you've ever heard before with a distinct voice that's immediately recognizable (think a softer version on Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys). With albums that keep getting better than his last, I'm sure the next Ray LaMontagne album will bring about more surprises that are just as easy on the ears as this one, maybe more so.
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