Perşembe 30 Ara 2010, 14:12

Twenty-Ten sent me tumbling through wormhole after wormhole–three hundred sixty five days of straight-up shock, loss, love, scars and psychedelica. I went road tripping in Arizona in the middle of a blizzard. I spent three days in bed drinking wine, eating Chinese food and York Peppermint Patties while watching The L Word. I dropped acid and lived a whole lifetime in a mere six hours. I went ten days without seeing a single human. I fell in love again. I finally read Gravity’s Rainbow in its entirety. I kind of almost finished writing a novel of my own. And I managed to go the whole year without getting one single sunburn.

From dope to most dope, these are the jams which soundtracked all this silliness:

10. “Goodnight Everything” Liars
A song which reeks of nihilism and sexual punishment, “Goodnight Everything” became my greatest musical obsession this year, though objectivity would not permit me to push it higher on this list. It manages to be sexy, dark and brutal while maintaining a sort of gloomy nonchalance that keeps it from becoming cheesy. Somber ponderous oboe and violin march into ruthless overdriven guitar that’s all like, lick my boot soles…slut.

9. "Coquette Coquette" of Montreal
If I were a man I would dress in drag and listen to this while riding the most flamboyant possible animal on the Schenley Plaza carousel.

8. "Round And Round" Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

7. "Silver Soul" Beach House
This is dream pop for the casually heart-broken. Each strummed note jets like a sad little fountain. Victoria’s voice aches like regret and soars like a majestic bird described in the pages of dusty, ancient volumes of forgotten mythology.

6. “Light From the Mesa” Barn Owl
Steam rises from yawning chasms as now-extinct land beasts mourn lost loved ones amid the rubble of some cataclysmic geological event.

5. "The Heat" Twista (featuring Raekwon)
If you actually take the time to break down what Twista says here, you'll realize that certain of his verses make little to no sense. But his flow is wicked smooth, his relentless use of assonance unparalleled. The hook (or chorus ) is full of soul, almost crushingly so, and the beat whispers like a nasty hot summer breeze that fills idle stoop dwellers with dreams of sex and violence.

4. "USA Boys" HEALTH
Dance jam of the year right here. As my friend and mentor Petey Pablo once said, “Take your shirt off, twist it ‘round your head, spin it like a helicopter.” But in all seriousness, this synth will maim you.

3. "Shutterbug" Big Boi
Absolute sickest beat of the season. Like, I fell in love after five seconds. In my head I see a wealthy, corpulent grey-haired black man humming in the shower with a fat cigar dangling from his mouth. Makes me wish I was still in high school so I could grind up on hot boyz in bad ties at the homecoming dance.

2. "Limited Space" Yellow Swans
More hypnotic and less abrasive than earlier YS works, this song seems to lack inherent emotion, instead providing a capsule for the listener’s own preoccupations. Its magic lies in the simple, beautiful contrast between the steady, sleigh-bell percussion and distant wailing guitar. The song actually seems to collapse at the end, enveloped in guitar fuzz, suggesting the final stage in the erosion of a dark redoubtable stone monstrosity.

1. “Excessive Moonlight” Indian Jewelry

Goodnight EverythingCoquet CoquetteSilver SoulLight From the MesaThe HeatUSA BoysShutterbugLimited SpaceExcessive Moonlight