Best of 2010

One problem with starting a music blog in 2012 is managing to keep up with new music (logically impossible, since today there is more than 24 hours of music recorded each day) and somehow still finding the time to record my thoughts on all the older music I've listened to. To alleviate this, I've decided to take a page out of the book of, er, every major music magazine, and introduce a retroactive year-end list feature. These lists are not complete, but nothing is on here that I haven't considered thoughtfully. I also won't post a list without listening to the "important" albums of that year, id est, the ones that appear on the year-end lists of other critics and media. The first reason for this is that I've always been, to misquote Minor Threat, more than a few paces out-of-step with new music anyway. Hey, I was born in 1989-- there's a lot to catch up to. The second reason is that, to misquote another band, I'm a listomaniac, and have been every since I started ranking my baseball cards in grade school. If I give my postdated year-end list and you see something missing, let me know. There's a good chance I listened to it and simply wasn't impressed, but there's also a chance it flew under my radar. Anyway, here's a selective but, I like to think, well-informed and thoroughly researched list of favorites.

2010

1. Vampire Weekend: Contra
2. Elizabeth Cook: Welder
3. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4. No Age: Everything In Between
5. Robyn: Body Talk
6. Teddybears: Devil’s Music
7. The Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
8. The National: High Violet
9. M.I.A.: Maya
10. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma
11. Deerhunter: Halycon Digest
12. Das Racist: Sit Down, Man
13. Belle & Sebastian: Write About Love
14. Four Tet: There Is Love in You
15. Girl Talk: All Day
16. Das Racist: Shut Up, Dude
17. Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday
18. Calle 13: Entre Los Que Quieran
19. Lil Wayne: No Ceilings
20. Superchunk: Majesty Shredding
21. VV Brown: Traveling Like the Light
22. Titus Andronicus: The Monitor
23. Dessa: A Badly Broken Code 
24. Surfer Blood: Astro Coast
25. Best Coast: Crazy for You
26. Homeboy Sandman: The Good Sun
27. The Books: The Way Out
28. Mountain Goats: The Life of the World to Come
29. LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening
30. Eminem: Recovery