Top 20 Albums of 2010: Part One, 20-11

NUMBER TWENTY

CRYSTAL CASTLES: CRYSTAL CASTLES

Crystal Castles want to fuck you up. And then they want to make sweet, back alley love to you. Just check the duality of the one-two opening punch of "Fainting Spells" and "Celestia." The former packs mind-melting synths, discombobulating channel-jumping and the most abrasive vocal performance this side of an early Blood Brothers album. The latter goes in completely the opposite direction, rocking epic gothic melodies and Alice Glass' hauntingly seductive voice to create one of the greatest ballads this year. That kind of dichotomy is what makes the 2010 version of Crystal Castles interesting. Yeah, Alice Glass can destroy your brainpan, but she can also make you melt. Yeah, Ethan Kath can attack you with walls of blown-out noise, but he can also rock you to sleep. Not bad for a band once derided as a one-trick pony.

Peep numbers nineteen through eleven after the jump.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Two: 40-31

NUMBER FORTY

The "K.R.I.T." portion of Mississippi rapper Justin Scott's stage name stands for "King Remembered in Time." If dude keeps on rolling out jams like "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. will be remembered right this moment, too. A lot of Southern rappers go for porch stoop communal tracks or maximalist crunk. On "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. splits the difference, throwing in a little bit of Dilla-esque spliced vocal samples for good measure, and creates something that expresses the pride and depression, the dreams and the reality of Southern living.

Hit the jump for numbers thirty-nine through thirty-one.

Drake, Vampire Weekend, and Why We Hate Affluence

On June 15th Toronto rapper Drake, previously best known for starring in Degrassi: The Next Generation, released his debut album Thank Me Later. If you were a person who followed musicians or music journalists or music websites on Twitter, you saw the aftermath. Dude made the music-loving Internet straight blow up with people debating whether Drake was awesome or terrible.



There was no accepted in between on Drake. Talib Kweli, a dude who seemed to not have feelings incredibly strongly on either side of the Drake argument, was having to battle people on both sides of the fence just for his right to be not passionate about the topic. When Pitchfork gave the album an 8.4, 1000 Times Yes immediately tweeted that, if you were confused and disoriented by Pitchfork's review, have no fear, the Drake album sucked. Ryan Dombal was the guy who wrote the Drake review, and fellow Pitchfork writer Tom Breihan quickly took to his Tumbler, drawing parallels between Dombal and Jeremy Renner's character in The Hurt Locker.