#3 of 2010

some things you can't explain, they just click for you, they creep up inside your life, bit by bit, undetectable-- is it some of the words, is it the sound, the music, will it help if you play it backwards, will you be able to explain why you must repeat and repeat and repeat the same tracks from the moment you get up till you fall asleep, still humming them as you do?
when I started my rough draft for the top 20 albums for #blogovision, Interpol was a *maybe* for #17-18, but day by day it still persisted in my daily OCD-fueled elimination drama. Every day it was on the chopping block, but still I saved it for a better spot. and here we are today, I could only barely constrain myself to keep them from the two higher spots. and I still can't explain.

All that I seek...

please police me
I want you to police me
but keep it clean
uhhh...

#3. Interpol - Interpol





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#4 of 2010

Toph (="Trouble Over Tokyo") is insane enough to release his third album as a book. a cd with a hardbound lyrics book and commentary. or a poem collection as an audiobook? or a novel with a soundtrack? or... whatever-- something amazing.

a collection of personal experiences and emotions, refined to 12 songs-poems-stories-letters---storms. at the heart of each storm, each tiny hurricane, something terribly personal and vulnerable but universal and crushing, strong. or maybe I'm talking too much again. I'll sure be swept away

We, we know what we're doing
We know it can unleash dogs
We know it can break us
But we fight, we fight all the boundaries
We fight it with rule breaking
We fight it with mistaking

We keep saying that it's enough
To start fires that can't be touched
And flames flicker
Flames, flames flicker
The flames flicker and the fire gets bigger

#4. Trouble Over Tokyo - Hurricane





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#5 of 2010

it's a movie soundtrack featuring the songs from the movie based on the comic book, performed -and credited to- the bands in the movie, and the songs that inspired the comic book characters that make up the band that perform in the movie. straightforward? also, fun. energetic. youthful. trashy. the best adaptation of a comic on screen and the best adaptation of songs to fit the mood of the comic and the characters. the songs becoming the characters as much as the actors are. confused yet?

Beck writes the songs performed by Scott and his band (Sex Bob-omb, of course), Broken Social Scene perform as Crash & the Boys (with the fan-fave 0,7 seconds long sad, so very sad track) and Metric with the Clash at Demonhead's "Black Sheep", the track that has burned a hole in my ipod this year with its seductive, mean-spirited, ex-from-hell, sexy-as-heck opening:

Hello again- friend of a friend- I knew you when-our common goal- was waiting for- the world to end-

#5. Scott Pilgrim vs The World - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack





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#6 of 2010

half-way through the 7-and-a-half minute long quietly-melancholic "Our Love (or how we lost it)" Monika's voice starts to rise in fury, anger, desperation. and the music suddenly follows suit and explodes into a chaotic, uncontrollable drums tantrum, covering everything in dust and smoke -- and then subsides, with the last few of the disparate falling piano keys bouncing off the ground. six seconds of deathly, mournful, silent, nothing. and then -- her voice, whispering... God, I miss you... a soft murmur, and a heavy unliftable tear-filled sob from deep inside, a sigh that crushes your heart like a mountain of sorrow and regret.
Every time she plays this song in concert she provides an introduction, this is a song she wrote for herself, one she likes to play alone in her living room on quiet afternoons. a song about love, and losing it, a memory with music and words and, when there's no more need or space for them, without.

#6. Monika - Exit



cause every time I sing, I do it for you
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#7 of 2010

such a strange experience. a collection of songs, all unique, yet all one - merging with each other, a bit of one in one another, the suburbs in each and every one of them. growing up, leaving the suburbs. leaving home, leaving love, leaving hopes and dreams, changing, pretending to change, resisting to change, manning up, withering down. leaving... what behind?

In the suburbs, I... learned to drive. (away)

#7. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs



All the kids have always known
that the emperor wears no clothes
but to bow to down to them anyway
is better than to be alone
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#8 of 2010

top 8. damn this is getting exponentially harder. like a perverse reality game where each day I have to unceremoniously oust one of my favourite (secret) artists from the running towards becoming blah blah blah. I do watch too much TV for my own good. but the difficulty is still there and the urge to not write about why I love each of them but instead justify why they're not in my top 3, in which any of these 8 could be. This is the part where I reach for the kleenex.

Number 8, the National... but I can't explain it. Matt Berninger could be reading me the damn phonebook and I'd still be in love with the sound of his voice. Only, he's not, he's saying things like "...and I can’t fall asleep without a little help it takes awhile to settle down my ship of hopes" and he's driving an elegant little rusty dagger through your heart with every soft heavy whisper of his.

#8. The National - High Violet



it's a terrible love and I'm walking with spiders
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#9 of 2010

the most unapologetically disco-dancey album of the year. Sexy, rude, crude and just right.

plus: Baby-Daddy, how can you say no to that hairy baby mug? ;)

#9. Scissor Sisters - Night Work



Take me any way you like it.
in front of your fireplace...
in front of your yacht...
in front of my parents...
I don't give a damn, baby
just take me!
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