Escape Artist's Top Ten Albums of 2010

I originally thought I'd try introducing this list with a concise paragraph blithely summarising 2010: The Year In Music. I imagined myself like an Errol Flynn version of Lester Bangs, issuing proclamations on the birth and death of genres while swinging from a chandelier and slashing at the darkness of the artless abyss with my gleaming rapier (only the rapier is actually my WIT!). After 30 minutes of staring blankly at the screen, drooling all over my keyboard and pretending I wasn't just fantasising about Errol Flynn, I gave up.

Thing is, music is so huge (and has been for such a long time) that anyone with a brain that isn't located in their belly button knows that the grand musical decree is rendered irrelevant by the vast oceans of the music out there. To make brash, all-encompassing statements about music, you either have to boil it down to what people have been buying this year (that Lady Gaga, isn't she something else?) or you have to think really really hard about it. And I'm not willing to do either.

So suffice it to say that lots of good music came out this year. Here are ten bits of music, in no particular order, which I thought were the goodest.

Marnie Stern, Marnie Stern

Ever since her debut In Advance of the Broken Arm in 2007, Marnie Stern has been a fascinating guitar player and sporadically brilliant songwriter, but it wasn't until her self-titled third album that it all seemed to click. Before, her guitar's mix of reverb-laden distortion and rhythmic finger-tapping was entrancing but occasionally frustrating, too often flitting on to a new melody and tempo before the listener was done with the first.

Not that this year's album is all that different from its predecessors - the zinging guitar twang is intact; Stern's pixie-berserker howl is accounted for; Zach Hill still provides the waterfall of drums that adds to the tracks' breakneck abandon. But Marnie Stern feels like the purest and most condensed distillation of what makes its creator so invigorating. The guitar hooks are purer, the songs are more energised and focused, and the lyrics bleed raw emotion more than ever before. In this case, an eponymous album title makes perfect sense: these songs feel like the same Marnie Stern, just more so.

Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

...On which an egotistical virtuoso finally justifies his ego. West's past albums, despite moments of brash power and his undeniable ear for a hit, felt like shades of the versions archived away in his head. But just when we were ready to consign Yeezy to the trash can of promising rap careers swept away on a riptide of swagger and hubris, he opened up and showed us his twisted fantasy. It was beautiful (and dark).

It's not like there isn't boatloads of self-fellatio on Fantasy. Far from it. But it's joined by seething layers of self-hatred and revelations that always seem to come a little too late. What's so astonishing about this record it actually feels like a fairly comprehensive deconstruction (conscious or not) of a mind that straddles the line between preening ego, demented ambition and brittle vulnerability. And all put to one of the most consistently brilliant set of beats that mainstream hip hop has ever seen. From the Godzilla posturing of 'Monster' to 'So Appalled''s resigned decadence and 'Blame Game''s confused heartache, this is the sound of a facade forever cracked.

Deftones, Diamond Eyes

Diamond Eyes isn't a leap forward for Deftones. If anything, it's a scaling back. After a car crash left bassist Chi Cheng in a semi-conscious state from which he is yet to fully recover, the band temporarily shelved the record they had been working on, called Eros, and reassessed. They decided to draft in ex-Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega and record an album fast and loose, sharing more DNA with the relentless shred of Around the Fur than with the more languorous exploration found on Saturday Night Wrist.

The result is the band's least self-conscious record for years, filled with a renewed ferocity and energy. The album's first four tracks, starting with the gothic title track and running through to booming riff monster 'You've Seen The Butcher', comprise one of the best opening sections of the year. Throughout, the band seem more unified than they have since White Pony, and their enjoyment at rediscovering the relative simplicity of their early days is almost palpable. This is Deftones trimmed of the fuzzy edges, all lean muscle and hellcat fury. Just don't call it a comeback. This is a reassertion.

John Grant, Queen of Denmark

After ten years of labouring away as frontman of the Czars to little recognition and suffering through that band's disintegration, John Grant has ironically gotten the attention he deserves by embracing his outsider status. Part of the thanks for dragging Grant into the light should go Texas band Midlake who saw him perform and insisted on producing and recording his debut solo album, more than six years after the Czars' demise.

The spotlight should remain on Grant, however, who has created an album of adventurous yet poised lovelorn anthems. Focussing primarily on growing up gay in a God-fearing Midwestern hometown as well as some of his (by the sounds of it, painful) adult relationships, Queen of Denmark could have so easily been a pity party. But between the album's interesting arrangements, Grant's rich vocals and lyrics both heartbreaking and humorous, it feels more like a treasure trove. Tracks veer from wistful acoustic balladeering ('TC And The Honey Bear') to honky-tonk singalongs ('Silver Platter Club'), but they share Grant's appealingly direct lyrics and a world weariness that's occasionally leavened by bright thoughts.

Avey Tare, Down There

I'll happily admit that the debut solo album of Animal Collective's Avey Tare won't be for everyone. From the first sleepwalking beats on opener 'Laughing Hieroglyphic', a fair proportion of listeners would probably prefer to plug their ears with aggressive termites than continue. But those who stick around are rewarded with one of the year's most immersive albums, the lack of immediate hooks made irrelevant by the addictiveness of Down There's nocturnal atmosphere.

Here's my review of Down There for the BBC Music website.

Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma

A lot has been made of Flying Lotus' (aka Steven Ellison) jazz heritage as a central tenet informing his latest electro-headtrip Cosmogramma. There's definitely something to that - the freeform synths and constantly evolving beats of a track like 'Zodiac Shit' feel like a natural modern progression of the improvisational virtuosity of Miles Davis or John Coltrane (FlyLo's great-uncle).

But the overriding vibe flowing out of Cosmogramma's every pore is a grand psychedelia. If electronic music has a general flaw it's that it too often moves like mathematics, perfect rhythm matching pre-programmed harmonies in a way that can sometimes seem sterile and robotic. Flying Lotus has definitely bucked that trend on his latest album, more so than any of his other recordings. These tracks bend and creak and morph into one another. In a genre that often prioritises keeping toes tapping over scratching through to its soul, Cosmogramma is a revolution in its imperfection and humanity.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Before Today

One of America's great musical traditions, and one that is consistently underrated in the modern day, is that of the MOR radio rock song. Simple and unpretentious, this very American pop form tends to age well as a result of simple hooks and timeless, accessible melodies.

There are now a fair few US bands looking back into the country's B-league pop catalogue in an attempt to craft something new from the raw material of the 70s and early 80s. With his first major label release after a raft of lo-fi bedroom LPs, the prolific and obsessive Ariel Pink has emerged at the forefront of this movement. Before Today isn't just a series of nostalgic reconstructions, however. Every track seems to take a classic format and jumble it into something effortlessly modern.

The gloriously-named 'Butt House Blondies' matches the heavier moments of Husker Du and the Replacements with baroque pop verse sections to make a cocktail that's both smooth and gutsy. 'Beverly Kills' kicks off with the 70s soul staple of cop sirens and the hubbub of street chat before seamlessly busting out the slap-bass and loading the listener onto a disco bus - destination? Funky town. It's this makeshift stitching of styles, combined with the pervasive presence of Pink's distinctive vision, that makes Before Today so special.

The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night

The Besnard Lakes' last album ...Are The Dark Horse was one of the most sensual pleasures of 2007, and as such many of us probably would have been perfectly happy for the Montreal-based band to just poop out a reconstituted version this year, complete with that album's elegant, spidery spirit.

Re-poop they did not, however, and shame on us for being willing to settle. ...Are The Roaring Night is a far more expansive experience than its predecessor, taking the epic template of 'Devastation', one of the few songs on Dark Horse that went really stratospheric, and using it to make an album of soul-scorching post-rock. 'Chicago Train' starts with an orchestral whisper and ends with an electrifying shout; 'Albatross' radiates warmth and light before exploding into an almost epiphanic supernova. The Roaring Night is an appropriate title for a record so epic that it might burst out of your speakers and do battle with a flaming unicorn made of lasers right there in your living room, before giving you a thumbs-up and imploding with the force of a hundred thousand collapsing stars. It's really good, essentially.

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

So that makes three amazing albums in a row from the officially crowned Kings of Indiedom. This incredible streak is made all the more impressive because the band have (consciously or not) refused to retread old ground, placing each successive release with its own fully fleshed-out world. The Suburbs isn't nearly as flashy as Funeral or Neon Bible, but that's in keeping with the album's exploration of the mundane and the middle-class, the comfortable and the comatose. While by no means sparse, The Suburbs exercises a lot more restraint than its older siblings, constructing quietly desperate vignettes of defeated youth and the empty confection of privileged modern life. Old hat perhaps, but Arcade Fire never fail to separate themselves from the crowd with an abundance of passion and conviction. While there is a lower anthem ratio than some fans might expect, that sense of conviction burns as brightly and as intensely as ever.

Joanna Newsom, Have One On Me

Finally, a Joanna Newsom album we can all agree on. Her earlier albums Ys and The Milk-Eyed Mender are immensely impressive, but tend to split opinion, depending on the listener's proclivity for intricate harp plucking and vocals that occasionally hit a pitch that only dogs can truly appreciate. Despite being a somewhat intimidating triple album, Have One On Me is Newsom's most generous album to date, kind of like a sonic cuddle. The depth of the lyrics and stunning instrumentation is still there; the simpler arrangements simply sharpen the picture to show these virtues with due clarity. Tracks like 'Good Intentions Paving Co.', '81' and 'On A Good Day' are the clearest expression yet of Newsom's giving yet iron-strong vocals, as well as her talent for composition and swirling, Sufjan Stevens-esque orchestration.

Question to ponder: how different would the music world be if Sonic Youth had been called Sonic Cuddle?