Albums of the Year 2010: Honorable Mention

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Pitchfork
December 15, 2010
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ceo
White Magic
[Modular / Sincerely Yours]

Keeping it real has been a successful marketing ploy at least since the first 1950s Volkswagen ads, which cleverly contrasted the humble "bug" with Detroit's falsely gleaming behemoths. But when Eric Berglund, better known as one-half of Swedish electro-pop duo the Tough Alliance, samples the words "I keep it real" on this solo debut, it sure sounds like he actually means them. Whether or not that's true, great songs like the intricately pulse-raising title track or twee S&M jam "Love and Do What You Will" don't lie. Indeed, the only thing modest about White Magic is its half-hour length, as electronic beats, indie-kid earnestness, hip-hop bravado, and all sorts of new-agey nature noises add up to one of the year's lushest productions. Berglund's cryptically rambling interviews send the same message as labelmates jj's cryptically terse ones: Music first.

Toro Y Moi
Causers of This
[Carpark]

Of all the dudes making hazy synth-pop in their bedrooms this year, Chaz Bundick might be the most versatile. The South Carolina electronic pop artist who records as Toro Y Moi has already flashed his dance-friendly side on a 12" under the alter ego Les Sins; his Body Angles cassette goes more for spiky distortion; and his next album leaves samples behind for "a more traditional approach." Debut full-length Causers of This is Bundick's spaced-out R&B record, and it's a beaut. Unlike so many similar projects, Causers can be enjoyed as much for its lusty, lonely songcraft as its dense atmosphere. "How can I tell if I love you anymore?" Bundick sings at one point, answering his own question: "Never mind/ I know I do." With soulful samples, funky bass, and palpable yet slightly oblique emotion, this is the breakup album for people who love makeout albums.

The Top 100 Tracks of 2010

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Pitchfork
December 13, 2010
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80. The Radio Dept.
"Heaven's on Fire"
[Labrador]

Let's say you're one of your country's most underrated bands. Let's also say, hypothetically, you're a little irritated by that fact, but you're clever and talented enough to realize that nobody wants to hear a dreamy soft-rock band's sour grapes. For the Radio Dept., a long-running Swedish pop group that previously had their biggest international success with the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, "Heaven's on Fire" is a perfect solution. Originally titled "Spring Time", the song is as radiant as the season: all cheery keyboards, jazzy guitars, and muted reverb. But Thurston Moore's anti-capitalist opening rant-- omitted from a version I've heard over corporate airwaves-- isn't here just for kicks. "When I look at you, I reach for a piano wire," Johan Duncanson murmurs on the song's second verse. Later he worries that "everyone" seems to be siding with "charlatans." Hell is other people; this song is something else. Heavenly subversion.

18. Titus Andronicus
"A More Perfect Union"
[XL]

The phrase "a more perfect union" is part of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, right after the "We the People" bit the Tea Partiers love so much. It's also the title of a speech that then-Sen. Barack Obama gave about race when his primary campaign looked most lost. As an indie rock song by Titus Andronicus, "A More Perfect Union" is ambitious enough for these lofty origins, and as down-to-earth as a college kid's face after one too many Four Lokos.

In other words, this is an anthem for people who hate anthems, at once intensely personal and impossibly grandiose. There's room for the places and experiences of Patrick Stickles' life, from the Garden State Parkway to Somerville, Mass., by way of the Fung Wah bus. There's room for Billy Bragg and New Jersey patron saint Bruce Springsteen. And, in keeping with the grandiose Civil War concept of the album this song opens, there's even room for the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (Stickles' former high school drama teacher is here, too, meticulously reciting Abraham Lincoln.)

Most simply, though, "A More Perfect Union" rocks: a riotous seven minutes of raw-throated passion and ragtag righteousness, fiery guitar interludes and madcap drumming. It's not entirely clear which flag Stickles wants us to "rally around," but anyone who has ever felt the least bit of allegiance to what some marketer once called "Alternative Nation"-- anyone who has ever considered themselves an underdog-- well, please rise. The state of the union could always be more perfect. This song probably couldn't.

IFRS Adoption: A Little Perspective

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December 13, 2010
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SEC Covers Top Audit Issues in 2010 Comments

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December 13, 2010
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The Return of the Hedge Fund Activist

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December 13, 2010
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Pfizer, Massey Split CEO-Chair Roles After Exits

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December 13, 2010
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Dodd-Frank Challenges Mount for SEC

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December 13, 2010
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Mass. Pension Fund Seeks More Female Directors

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December 6, 2010
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IRS Offers Last Chance to Fix Deferred Comp

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December 6, 2010
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Financial Pay Practices Have 'Worsened' Since Crisis: Study

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December 6, 2010
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Report Links SEC's Leniency on Merrill Deal to Bailout

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December 6, 2010
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Miko - Chandelier

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Pitchfork
December 8, 2010
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7.5













Australia's Lawrence and Rebecca English have spent the past few years proving that the everyday can be avant-garde. The husband-and-wife pair run Someone Good, while Lawrence curates sister imprint Room40, a preeminent experimental label that has recently put out records by the ambient-inclined Grouper and Tim Hecker. The Aussie couple are also the curatorial minds behind Someone Good, an imprint that takes a more modest, domestic view of gorgeous textural abstraction, releasing music often by Japan-based artists: avant-twee couple Lullatone, piano minimalist Akira Kosemura, Tenniscoats offshoot Nikasaya. This is simple yet elegant stuff.

As Miko, Tokyo-based Rie Mitsutake assembles vividly mic'd piano, acoustic guitar, and off-kilter percussion-- along with field recordings and her own hushed vocals-- into languidly immersive sound worlds that make the familiar wonderfully strange. Her 2008 debut, Parade, successfully introduced the basic elements of Miko's developing aesthetic, but that effort placed a greater emphasis on glimmering electronics and at times used near-shoegaze levels of ear-splitting distortion. Sophomore album Chandelier, like Kosemura's excellent Polaroid Piano last year, takes a turn toward the organic. The result shapes restrained, homespun instrumentation into something at once quaint and futuristic.

Someone Good is billing Miko's latest as a "new kind of folk music," and that's apt. Bird-like squawks and delicate vocals transcend their potential cutesiness to attain a sort of ascetic grace ("Sea House"); Talk Talk-inclined drums gently splash behind indie pop plinks and plonks ("Kikoeru"); saxophones drift past thrumming acoustic guitar ("New Town"). When Miko sings the word "America", on the hypnotic track of the same name, she conjures up a faraway place vastly different from the one I know. Compared with traditional folk song, there's certainly more attention paid to what words and sounds suggest rather than their literal meanings. (Apparently Miko chose the title Chandeliers as much for its spoken sound as for its associations with light and warmth). But there's also a sense of intimacy, of basic human connection, on which the old avant-garde might look with disdain. That would be missing the point.

The 40 Best Albums of 2010

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SPIN
January/February 2011
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CARIBOU

SWIM 

"Hop in the blue, blue sky," sang avant-disco luminary Arthur Russell on 1986's "Let's Go Swimming." And with Swim, Dan Snaith does just that. The chameleon formerly known as Manitoba has explored shoegaze, IDM, krautrock, and shiny '60s psych-pop, but his latest dives into headphone-friendly dance music's deep blue. What does he find, amid floaty vocals, MDMA grooves, and poignant lyrics? "Sun, sun, sun." Add the vibrant pathos of "Odessa" and "Kaili," and you've got the first grown-up chillwave album.

BIG BOI

SIR LUCIOUS LEFT FOOT:THE SONG OF CHICO DUSTY 

Label politics kept the Aquemini-echoing André 3000-Raekwon collabo "Royal Flush" off this first official solo album by OutKast's street-savvier half. Lame? Yeah. Fitting, too. While Lucious is a great rap album in a classic sense, its heavy, heady funk never looks back. Guests kill: Gucci Mane on the soul-woozy "Shine Blockas," even dissolute producer Scott Storch on teeth-rattler "Shutterbugg." But "General Patton" prevails: "Let's be clear / I'm a leader, not your peer." Boi, don't stop.

Robyn - Body Talk

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Pitchfork
December 3, 2010
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8.7

 












"Fembots have feelings, too." When we first heard Robyn sing those words, on a single promoting what would become a three-volume set of mini-LPs all bearing the name Body Talk, it was easy to focus on the Swedish pop singer's quirky sense of humor. But on this new full-length edition, "Fembot" also reveals itself as a compelling statement of purpose. Playing off contemporary pop's age-old diva-as-robot trope and cautioning that fellow droids who "burn out" are "ready for demolition," Robyn is a pop star who first and foremost projects a need for emotional connection.

If that's Robyn's artistic credo, then Body Talk is living, breathing, cybernetic proof. Melding dancehall with bubblegum pop, heartbroken love songs with hilariously catty weirdness, and euphorically catchy melodies with propulsive rhythms, Body Talk-- which combines the five-song Body Talk Pt. 3 with, outside of Pt. 1's uncommonly wise "Cry When You Get Older", the highlights from the first two mini-albums-- is a deeply affecting pop record. Robyn may not have released three full albums this year as first implied, but her first true full-length in five years is one of the year's best.

What sets Robyn apart from her contemporaries is the three-dimensional complexity of her character, and all sides are on display here. There's plenty of don't-fuck-with-me attitude in the icy electro-throb of "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do", which introduces a shit-talking heroine who may be flawed but won't be anyone's pawn. And with production by Diplo, the mock-outrageous Jamaica homage "Dancehall Queen" proves she's not kidding. But she's also sensitive enough that, during one of Body Talk's most inspired moments-- the soaringly tuneful electro-pop ballad "Call Your Girlfriend"-- she tells her boyfriend exactly how to break it off with the other woman to inflict the least emotional damage.

However, the highlight from this Year of Robyn remains the gorgeous "Dancing on My Own". What's especially remarkable is that there was any room for improvement: The track appears here as an amped-up "radio remix" with bonus synths giving the lovelorn chorus an extra wallop. But then again, Robyn is a master of re-invention: "Indestructible" and "Hang With Me" were first released as emotive acoustic ballads, and later given revved-up Eurodisco overhauls that ramped up the intensity without sacrificing an ounce of their bittersweet charm. Those are the versions included here, and both lend further ammunition to Body Talk's already military-grade stockpile.

Robyn's willingness to experiment with album conventions may feel like an ingenious gimmick, but there's no artifice to the desire for human connection that underlies her vocal quiver and party-starting kickdrums. She communicates heartbreak so convincingly that some of her most devoted fans actually wonder online about her presumed loneliness. She also attacks the charts from the fringes. She explores the fringes from the charts. She should be universal. So why isn't she? With Body Talk, Robyn ups the ante for pop stars across the radio dial and raises her own chances of appearing on yours. And for all her three-album talk, she never forgets that cardinal rule of showmanship: Always leave them wanting more.

Say-on-Pay Frequency: What Should Boards Support?

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November 29, 2010
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Justice Dept. Official Puts FCPA Violators On Notice

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November 29, 2010
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ICI to SEC: Exempt Munis From Asset-Backed Rules

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November 29, 2010
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