2010 in Music Part 5: My Favorite Albums

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Arcade fire set the bar (again) for a great indie rock album.  I haven’t been able to find the proper words to describe this album, i’ve been scratching my head for weeks.  I know I really like it, I saw them play half of it live (which was awesome), but I’m not sure how to explain that to you.  So as a huge cop out, I’m going to let it speak for itself:

Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame

In 2008 I was in love with hard working Philidelphia rock band, Dr. Dog and their album Fate –  the sound, the lyrics, the way the guys just got on stage and play their hearts out, with nothing to prove, and very little to say – perfect.  I didn’t think I could ever like another Dr. Dog album more than that one, but when they Riff into “THEY FOUND A BOD-Y IN THE RIVER-ER-ER” in the middle of Mirror, Mirror, Track 9 of Shame, Shame,  I was in love.  Once again Dr. Dog matches up alternating lead singers, three part harmonies and complex (reminiscent of the Beatles and ELO among others) musical structures with great lyrics.  Mirror, Mirror features a character without a reflection, “so tired that I can’t sleep/the secrets that my secrets keep…I don’t want to see my name in stone…I’ve got  devil after me”  which seems pretty bizarre until the second half of the song, when the tempo picks up and style gets more intense, and we realize that he’s the ghost of that body found in the river.  The singer asks “Did someone give you bad directions, were you in the wrong place at the wrong time?”  In the end the victim of the song accepts his fate and says “leave my worries to the water, and leave my body to the land”

 

Black Keys – Brothers

The main thing that differentiates it from previous black keys albums, is that this one has SOUL.  I was a relative new comer to this band, I’d heard strange days and thought it was a fun blues-rock song, but I don’t think I ever realized the band had the potential that they came through on.  My first introduction to this album was the not-a-music-video videos that featured tighten up and a few other tracks with a dancing puppet (frank the dinosaur) and humourous scrolling text , When I finally got a hold of the album, not only were the songs catchy, but there was not a bad track on the entire thing.

The tracks, Let Me Be Your Everlasting Light, My Next Girl, Howlin for You, She’s Long Gone, The Only One, Too Afraid to Love You, and I’m Not the One set the frame work, nearly through titles alone, for this twisting romantic/anti-romantic epic.  The rest of the album is filled out with instrumental – Black Mud, and a handful of story based, and really catchy tracks – Ten Cent Pistol, Sinister Kid, and The Go Getter – featuring payback from a jealous girl, the boy with a broken halo, and a depressed womanizer in L.A..  The album is rounded out with the titular track, Unknown brother, a bittersweet ode to “My baby’s mothers pain” an older brother lost before the singer was born.  The album wraps up with the most soulful track a cover of Jerry butler’s 1968 Never Give you up (not to be mixed up with anything by rick astley thanks google)  and These days, a song  about a broken down, Introspective man with“ blood red eyes , Wasted times and broken dreams”