Looks aside, after the great success of This Is Happening,
it's hard to envision a better voice for our generation than
Murphy's. At his simplest (""Drunk Girls""), Murphy provides a
catchy, frat-house hit about partiers, for partiers. At his most
dense (""You Wanted A Hit""), Murphy builds a modern anthem out of
an electronic loop and argues he ""doesn't do hits"" all the while.
And while Murphy meanders through electro-dance, guitar-punk and
other styles, the album maintains an organic consistency.
If the uplifting chorus of the album closer, ""Home,"" sounds
familiar, it should: it's practically a note-for-note reenactment
of ""Dance Yrself Clean's"" opening chorus. Yet, this chorus sounds
just as killer the second time around. Likewise, this album sounds
just as awesome the 30th time around.
––Jon Mitchell
2. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
Halcyon Digest is the album where everyone can stop
talking about Bradford Cox and start talking about Deerhunter. The
enigmatic songwriter Cox has spent more than six LP's dipping his
toes in everything from hard-hitting kraut-rock to ethereal,
meandering pop, to mostly successful results. But on last year's
terrific Logos, Cox seemed to finally find his comfort zone by
creating unhinged, jangly pop music using abstract, wispy textures
for his solitary bedroom-pop outfit Atlas Sound. But on Halcyon
Digest he has the force of a full band behind him, and the
result is that much more visceral.
Deerhunter will tell you the album aims to detail the tragic way we
edit our memories into digest versions that we can easily access
and revisit later. But they don't use concise narratives or guiding
lights to show you where your hippocampus falters. Instead, the
most compelling moments are those where the listener gets lost,
trapped inside a loop on ""Desire Lines"" or swept up by the
aqueous percussion on ""Helicopter."" You get caught up in the tide
of ""Revival,"" the breeze on ""Memory Boy"" or the subterranean
tremors of ""Basement Scene,"" and you have no choice but to go
back and see what you missed. And you will, over and over again,
because there's no way to make a digest version of something as
full as Halcyon Digest.
––Kyle Sparks
3. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Do you hate your hometown? Do you like getting drunk with your
buddies? Do you still despise that girl who broke your heart? Of
course you do. Hell, everyone does—these ideas have inspired rock
songs for decades.
But what if, right before a band launches into yet another song
about angst and loathing, we heard from Abraham Lincoln? And right
after it, an excerpt from William Lloyd Garrrison's abolitionist
newspaper The Liberator?
On The Monitor, Titus Andronicus takes the basic ideas
behind any rock 'n' roll song––good times, rebellion, heartbreak,
etc.––and turns them into a war.
Between soaring guitar riffs, earth-shaking drum beats and vocals
that reek of desperation and hopelessness, Titus Andronicus weave
their theme of the Civil War throughout The Monitor. And
what that war was to the Union and Confederacy––a battle for one's
very ideals and way of life––is what this war is to Titus
Andronicus.
What they are fighting against is never entirely certain, but it's
an epic struggle nonetheless. On The Monitor, hating New
Jersey and getting drunk are not just ideas, they are the band's
ammunition in this fight for their way of life. The result is an
album that takes those classic themes of heartache and angst, and
uses them to create a truly epic sound.
––Nico Savidge
4. Beach House - Teen Dream
Teen Dream, the third release from Beach House, is one of
those rare albums that are immediately accessible. As its title
suggests, its sound is dreamy and completely unique to the band.
And by God, is it catchy.
But the genius of the album lies not in its inventive grasp of
simplicity: Teen Dream is far more complex than that.
Working behind the wonderfully elastic and layered intonations of
sound that create a haze of precariousness and peculiarity only
found in a dream, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally speak deeply and
philosophically about the human condition. They examine the mutiny
of the individual over the course of time, and how one changes,
permanently, with each new experience.
Also like a dream, their lyrics evoke reflective images of past
personas, perhaps never more poignantly than on ""Used To Be.""
Scally sings harmoniously above a rising crescendo of guitar pulses
and drum beats, ""Don't forget the nights / When it all felt right
/ Are you not the same as you used to be."" And some advice for new
listeners: do not get swept away by the dreaminess of Beach House's
easygoing sound, for you will miss the brilliance of the album as a
piece of art, and how well their memory-inducing lyrics match their
ethereal melodies.
––Cole Wenzel
5. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted
Fantasy
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is essentially the
""Mona Lisa"" of Kanye West's career: it will be forever remembered
as an album of impeccable quality in terms of its production,
instrumentation, featured artists and overall intimate feeling.
West's talent (and ego) shines through this album as he defies the
norms of hip-hop, magnifying provocative beats and transforming his
feelings into a strong and beautiful collection of songs.
What makes My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy so different
and, more importantly, superior to West's other albums is that is
sounds and feels exactly like a West album should, but the precise
production and impeccable contributions makes it unlike anything he
has previously produced.
Although this is his fifth release, Kanye sounds as fresh on My
Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as he did on ""Jesus Walks.""
The sheer power of this album makes it one of the best of the year.
Despite being a paradox, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
has created new opportunities in the world of hip-hop, and Kanye
West is the one at the helm.
––Aimee Katz
6. Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild
Hunt
Tallest Man on Earth sounds too much like Bob Dylan. Kristian
Matsson's sweeping guitar and fingerpicking are as mechanically
profound as the best folk players were, and his weathered voice
strains itself right to the point of evoking, well, you know
who.
And like other legendary touchstones, what makes The Wild
Hunt the high-water mark for contemporary folk singers is how
natural Matsson makes everything sound and how detached he presents
himself. The diminutive Swede spins narratives from the fertile
dirt and blossoming foliage until they fulfill a life of their own.
They're forces of nature much too grand for any one actor to
wrangle, so Matsson lets them flow uninterrupted. All of 5' 7"",
Matsson would need a sizable boost to dunk a basketball, but with a
guitar in his hands he scales buildings and bounds over mountains
with ease.
The Wild Hunt is more cosmopolitan than Tallest Man On Earth's
previous offerings, showing depth of personality as much as
description; but its vitality is still borne of nature's
life-giving elements. Matsson croaks and moans, he strums and taps,
and he writes songs that crumble vibrant landmarks to rivers of
tears. It's entertaining, enlightening and intimate—it's
Dylan-esque. So in a way all of his critics are spot-on: On The
Wild Hunt, Tallest Man on Earth sounds an awful lot like the
best folk songwriter in the world.
––Kyle Sparks
7. Javelin - No Más
It seems that anything David Byrne touches lately turns to gold,
and it's no accident that two artists on this list, Javelin and
Kings Go Forth, came from his record label Luaka Bop. Javelin's
No Más builds on their debut Jamz n Jemz, and the two
albums even share some of the same tracks.
It's difficult to place Javelin in a specific genre, but they
wouldn't have it any other way. Sythpop tracks like ""Vibrationz""
and the Nintendo-inspired ""Oh Centra"" open the album with high
energy. The instrumental ""Intervales Theme"" transitions the album
toward samples of old-school hip-hop and soul.
No Más borrows from Jamz n Jemz' original songs, and, in
doing so, it loses some of the raw, do-it-yourself style Javelin
was known for. ""Mossy Woodland,"" for example, was originally
featured as an instrumental on Jamz n Jemz, but is poorly rehashed
with lyrics on No Más. It's one of the only times this
album drags.
Nonetheless, No Más is a definite success. A dynamic group
whose live shows are usually complete with stacks of colored
boomboxes to amplify their sound, Javelin has finally matched the
quality of their live shows in the studio with No
Más.
––Margaret Raimann
8. The Black Keys - Brothers
The Black Keys picked a good time to burst onto the blues-rock
scene. After all, they entered the music world on a parallel
trajectory with that other blues-rock duo from the shores of Lake
Erie, The White Stripes (a band one bird-centric college newspaper
deemed the musical act of the last decade). As such, the sub-genre
has earned more attention than it ever had before since the release
of the Black Keys' debut album The Big Come Up. But even
after a decade of success, The Black Keys' latest effort,
Brothers, showcases the band at new heights and proves
they still deserve our utmost attention.
Brothers still features the same wailing electric guitar
riffs and raspy blues vocals from vocalist Dan Auerbach that have
become the Akron, Ohio duo's signature sound. But while Auerbach
and drummer Patrick Carney apply the tried-and-true Black Keys
formula, they hardly rest on their laurels.
Any formula that produces top-flight songs like ""Tighten Up""
clearly doesn't need much tinkering. And when they do add a slight
twist to the process, such as the ""Rock and Roll Part 2"" style
beat of ""Howlin' for You,"" the result ends up being another
quality track with some nostalgic zest. With Brothers, the
Black Keys show us again what we already know: that they are pros
and they are here to stay.
––Todd Stevens
9. Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
Following the massive success of his collaboration with Danger
Mouse, Gnarls Barkley, Cee Lo Green returned to the studio to
record his third solo album, The Lady Killer. Not your
typical R&B or soul album, The Lady Killer journeys
through the past decades sampling many musical stylings.
The Lady Killer garnered much anticipation after the first
single ""Fuck You!"" leaked months before the official release.
""Fuck You!"" brings the listener back to 1960s soul, a theme well
represented in the official video. It's safe to say that most
students have probably heard the song––or more likely, had it stuck
in their head––a fair amount this semester.
The rest of the album, which is not nearly as pop based as ""Fuck
You!,"" is equally well produced. The second track, ""Bright Lights
Bigger City"" boasts heavy dance beats contrasting background
string and horn accompaniments. Other notable tracks include ""It's
Okay"" and the aptly titled ""Old Fashioned,"" a slow love song
juxtaposed with the rest of the album.
Although it differs greatly from his past solo releases, Green
makes a strong return after his six-year stint working with Gnarles
Barkley and other side projects. From the composition to the
production, the vocals to the instrumental backings, The Lady
Killer is an easy and surprisingly refreshing listen.
––Danny Marchewka
10. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid
Few new artists are lucky enough to enter the music world to as
much fanfare as Janelle Monáe. With her debut album The
ArchAndroid, Monáe not only received mass critical praise, but
praise from every corner of the industry. As odd as that may seem
in regard to her sci-fi themed R&B album, The
ArchAndroid's success lies not only in Monáe's obvious
talent, but in her ability to appeal to virtually anybody.
The ArchAndroid encompasses a sprawling 17 tracks segueing
from genre to genre, featuring a range of guest artists highlighted
by Monáe's mentor, Big Boi. And the beauty of the album is that
none of it feels out of place––standout track ""Dance or Die,""
featuring collaborator Saul Williams, feels just as at home as
Kevin Barnes' contribution, ""Make the Bus."" And it's hard not to
mention the pure hurricane that is ""Tightrope,"" complete with a
verse from the aforementioned Big Boi.
Monáe is able to weave in these guest artists just as nimbly as a
seasoned veteran like Kanye West, all without subtracting from her
solo efforts on the album, such as the big band influenced ""Come
Alive (The War of the Roses)"" or the more pop-based ""Cold War.""
Janelle Monáe doesn't have crossover apeal––she is crossover
appeal.
––Todd Stevens
11. Caribou - Swim
12. Owen Pallett - Heartland
13. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
14. Best Coast - Crazy For You
15. Los Campesinos! - Romance Is
Boring
16. Toro y Moi - Causers Of This
17. Kings Go Forth - The Outsiders Are
Back
18. Wolf Parade - Expo 86
19. Four Tet - There Is Love In You
20. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
