2010 in Music part 1: A New Hope

2009 was a tough year for me to keep up with music I ended up listening to an excessive amount of pop music (houston radio was lame), and lost track of my favorite radio station (WPGU) and the indie scene in general.  hosuton was not getting as many good bands on tour on 2009 either, the only bands i really saw were at ACL ( thankfully that has changed since)  I decided that in 2010 I would stay on top of new releases, which was mostly successful.  This is part 1 of a multi-part series on the music of 2010, like with my 2008 review, I haven’t heard every album this year, but these are going to be all the ones that I loved.  So today, let’s talk about two bands I really liked prior to 2010, who produced albums early in the year which gave me hope for a great year in music.

 

Spoon’s Transference was initially challenging for me. Their previous album, 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga got a lot of airtime at regular Carl N house parties in my last year of college and became one of my favorite albums (so many glorious dance parties).  But, Transference grew on me, especially with tracks like Mystery zone, written in reverse (somebody better call a hearse!), trouble come running, and Nobody gets me but you (especially the bass part).  For the most part, the lyrics didn’t stick with me, but they still have a pretty cool sound, more like their previous album than any of the others. I finally got to see spoon this year, and the tracks from this album and Ga Ga Ga Ga were great in the sun at lollapalooza.

This time around Vampire weekend found an entire new set of sounds to play with, coming together in their sophomoric effort, Contra.  The released the single cousins in ’09, which was high energy with fast rhythm guitar and auxiliary percussion.  On the album they use space very well, the tracks aren’t that dense, but variable enough that it keeps your interest; they even use autot-une effectively on one track.  Tracks that I really liked were Horchata, Holiday (even now that its being ruined by Honda), California English, Giving Up the Gun (great music video) and the enigmatic track bouncing around my head most often – Diplomat’s Son.  (To offer it to you would be cruel/when all I want to do is use, use you/He was a diplomat’s son/it was eighty-one) The album wraps up with the titular track, Are you a contra?  Although its not as sonically cohesive a their first album, the cool thing this time around is  that even though every track sounds very different, you always can tell its vampire weekend, and its still plenty of fun.

10 months later, they’re not quite as fresh in my mind, but if my best of 2010 was written in march ,these albums would have been at the top of the list.

This post was a just teaser for the rest of the series: Tune in next time for Part 2, Lowered expectations – albums from bands I liked that were awful in 2010.