2010 Tunes: Quick Hits

Dudes, I said this earlier but I still really mean it: so far 2010 has been a pretty crazy year for music, and it's only March. May in particular is gonna be extra special, with new releases from Broken Social Scene, The National and LCD Soundsystem! And there's another 7 months of the year after that.

But there's already been several noteworthy releases this year, and I felt like writing about a bunch of them. So over the next few days I have a bunch of quick reviews and two longer ones coming up, check them out if you're curious to know what I think about certain things. Oh, and if you're curious, samples from most of these bands should be available over on ye olde playlist -->

So here's what I've been listening to...


Massive Attack - Heligoland

Always glad to see these guys back, even if it takes 5+ years between albums. So far I’ve found this album much more interesting than 100th Window - either because they’ve included more guest stars or do more with them this time around. It’s weird to hear Elbow’s Guy Harvey make a guest appearance, and weirder still to hear Damon Albarn on here (I feel like his appearance automatically makes “Saturday Come Slow” a Gorillaz song), but overall most of it works. For the purists, too, “Girl I Love You” is a great Horace Andy track while “Rush Minute” evokes the tense, shadowy 3D tracks of old. All in all, a good collection, and hopefully a sign of more frequent output from these guys in the near future.

Four Tet - There is Love in You

I hadn’t listened to these guys for years - not since my college disc-jockey days of playing as many 6-minute songs as I could find to make the job easier - and I’m starting to regret that. There is Love in You is a great collection of spacey electronic beats, at times soothing and at others thumping. Lead single “Love Cry” has built up a lot of excitement on the blogosphere - pretty impressive considering the thing is nine minutes long and the first half of it is build-up! So, great, now I have another artist’s back catalog to go through. Thanks a lot for being so good, Kieran Hebden!


Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Maybe my standards were too high for a follow-up to my #1 album of 2008, but I’ve found most of this album pretty underwhelming. Maybe also because, of their fairly bifurcated tendencies, I’ve always been much more in favor of the monster jamzzz while One Life Stand falls more heavily in line with their tender side. There are a couple worthy barnburners in “Thieves in the Night”, “We Have Love” and the title track, though they can’t quite reach the apex seen on previous albums. “Alley Cats” is probably the finest song on the album while also serving as its clearest microcosm: A little dancey, a little sentimental, it rattles a bit in the middle when Joe Goddard’s sleepy vocals threaten to derail the entire rhythm (I don’t know what Goddard’s deal is on this album; his papa-bear vocals are usually a welcome contrast to Alexis Taylor’s, but here he sounds either too slow or too doped-up or, Christ, even too auto-tuned to really enjoy. Sad, because I like the guy!), but then Taylor’s sublime vocals roll in, lifting all of us up; “you painted a song”, says he, and suddenly all is right with the world. Maybe I’m being too hard on these guys… sure, there are a few missteps (don’t get me started on “Slush”), but at least these guys are still trying new things, and I’m sure a lot of this will grow on me more over the coming months.

More tomorrow!