Top 20 Albums of 2010: Part Two, the Top Ten

NUMBER TEN

BATHS: CERULEAN

While some music sounds timeless, as if it could come from any era (see: Cosentino, Bethany), some music is inextricably linked to the time it was created. Cerulean, the debut LP from Will Wiesenfeld's Baths project, could only have been conceived, written, and created in modern music. Brian Eno and Aphex Twin and J Dilla and the Postal Service and Flying Lotus before we can get to the point of "Hall" or "Maximalist," where ambient, hip-hop, melancholy electro-pop, and killer breakbeats come together in the service of fragile love songs that still make your shoulder lean back and your head nod. Wiesenfeld has been doing this damn thing for awhile, and the experience in a group like [Post-Foetus] shows through on Cerulean. The strange conjecture of styles and emotions isn't a happy accident, it's a labored, intensive process that somehow still pulls off sounding wrought and relaxed, tense and cathartic.

Peep numbers nine through one after the jump.

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.

The Top Ten Albums of 2009

If you're old enough to look at porn, you're old enough to remember that there was a time when you still had to buy CDs. I remember randomly purchasing a Built to Spill record from Best Buy just on some general recommendations, without having heard the band before, and being blown away. That's something purchasing an album can do that simply can't happen in the MP3 era. I'd have never blown $17 on a record I hadn't heard anything from before and while that would have avoided some disastrous mistakes (Oh, 12-year old self, why did you think buying an Eagle Eye Cherry album was a good idea?), I also will never have that feeling of justification that I did the first time I heard "Big Dipper".

Listening to albums in 2009 is different than it was ten years ago because of this. You go in with less at stake and, while that means less risk, it can also mean less reward. The fact that these ten albums actually inspired that same sense of justification and reward made them Racecar Brown's top ten albums of 2009.