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Music in 2010

• 22nd Dec 2010

2010 was a brilliant year for music and, as it draws to a close here are some of my highlights.

Best Album
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Easily the most well reviewed album of the year and I’m not going to be the one to falter that. With two incredible albums behind their back, 2005 effort Funeral and Neon Bible from 2007, could this third effort be the turning point into realms of mastery, taking after Ok Computer and Born to Run and transforming a very good band, into a legendary one? Long story short, it could, and it did it in style. A record of unfaltering greatness, combining anthemic rock tracks like Month of May with the disco-tinged Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) with ease, whilst throughout, a haunting footprint of nostalgia treads through the landscape of this masterpiece.

Best Festival
Reading and Leeds 2010

Unfortunately, what this years Reading will always be remembered for is Axl Rose and his band of merry men, turning up on stage an hour late, then staging a hissy fit when the stage had to be shut down at midnight, not ‘rock and roll’ at all, he just looked like an idiot; from what i hear that is, i was watching Phoenix play a blinder in the NME tent. Saturday marked out what for a lot of people was the main event, sub-headlining, The Libertines, the likely lads back together for what was an emotional set, sharing the mic like nothing had happened and drawing a bigger crowd than headliners Arcade Fire, who needless to say i thought were incredible. This year also marked the return of Blink 182 to this side of the Atlantic, headlining the main stage on Sunday night, and although not the best band i’ve ever seen, they were exactly what you would expect them to be, funny, drunk and not taking themselves too seriously (Axl…)

Best Song
Spanish Sahara – Foals

Named NME’s track of the year and mine too, this almost 7 minute epic marked a new direction for Foals, from indie-happy math rockers to second album heroes, a hurdle that so many hopefuls have fallen at. The debut track from the brilliant album Total Life Forever, begins with only a few minimal notes with Yannis Philippakis providing the wistful vocals, as the song turns into a monster of sound, building and building into an incredible musical feat. On record, the best song of the year, live, even better.

Best Gig
The Man Alive Ensemble: Everything Everything @ The Union Chapel

One of the best bands to emerge from 2010, Everything Everything combined their debut album Man Alive with a 13 piece orchestra from the Royal Northern College of Music to create the strangest and most intelligent shows of the year. The setting, Union Chapel, providing a fittingly beautiful backdrop to the music on stage. With such a distinctive sound, I was unsure as to whether this collaboration of pedals and brass would work, but it just made every single song sound like it had been made for it. Now I must go back to listening to Man Alive without the RNCM orchestra at hand, but in the back of my mind I’ll know that for one cold December night it was so much more.

Best Video
Drunk Girls – LCD Soundsystem

This year provided a host of technically incredible music videos, the body merging orgy of Klaxons Twin Flames, the product placement crammed Gaga effort Telephone and the Stylo car chase from Gorillaz, starring none other than John McClane. Unfortunately my favourite video for the year is not some James Cameron cut off, it is in fact just that simple concept of James Murphy and his bandmates getting physically tormented by a barrage of men in mouse suits, and who could want more than that? There’s no message behind it, no underlying meaning and no thought provoking message for us all to look inside ourselves and think about those worse off. It’s just a bit of fun, and personally I think that’s what music videos should all be about.

So, there we go, my best musical bits of this year… discuss?
Cheers,

Jake Cunningham