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Below are my top ten eleven albums of 2010, so far:

Beach House - Teen Dream

A sparse, dark album loaded with beautiful melodies and minimal soundscapes. This album is incredibly focused and the result is moving and often forlorn look into relationships and love. This is the first Beach House record to really connect with me, and man, did it ever grab hold tight.

Listen to “Zebra”.

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

James Murphy returns with another dance rock album full of introspective lyrics about growing older and carefree party jams (“Drunk Girls” is my lead horse in the Song of the Summer vote). As other music critics have said, this isn’t my favorite LCD Soundsystem record but it still stands leaps and bounds over most everything else in 2010.

Listen to “All I Want”.

Yeasayer - Odd Blood

This is a contender for my favorite album of the year. Experimental, edgy, fun - this feels like a more pop-oriented Animal Collective album. A HUGE departure from the band’s previous efforts, but it only made me like them more. Also a gutsy move by putting a bizarre vocal effect on the album’s opening track; it works as a palate cleanse from their old material into this new area. This is not an album for everyone, but the payoff here is huge.

Listen to “Ambling Alp”.

MGMT - Congratulations

A spacey, trippy album that explores psychedelia, 60s rock, complex lyricism and bizarre twists and turns. A brave move after a relatively safe but incredible debut in the art-rock dance scene of the 2000’s, this record alienated a lot of fans and has exactly zero singles on it. I still find it to be a strong showing, with epic sprawling landscapes and catchy hooks, despite it’s abject weirdness. Speaking of weirdness, this band wins the Dumbest Album Cover of 2010 Award. Good job fellas.

Listen to “It’s Working”.

The National - High Violet

Another Smiths and Joy Division-tinged record from one of indie rock’s focal points. This record feels like a continuation from Boxer, almost like the band kept digging to further uncover what was buried beneath them all along; to fully unearth that which they touched upon before. Even as that may be, this is still an ambitious and beautiful album and seriously worth a listen. The single “Bloodbuzz Ohio” delivers some incredible lines like, “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees” — all presented in the mellow baritone of Matt Berninger. Gorgeous.

Listen to “Bloodbuzz Ohio”.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

This record falls somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Bright Eyes. Biting, snarky, but with solid music throughout, this has been a fun listen. Riddled with historical quotes and based around The Civil War, the album itself gets it’s name from the US Navy’s first ironclad warship (built in 1862). The opening track’s classic line, “I never wanted to change the world // I’m just looking for a new New Jersey // ‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to die!” really hooked me for it’s cynicism and self-referential callouts.

Listen to “A More Perfect Union”.

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

These British folksters had me skeptical at first. Similar to Avett Brothers, loved by critics and hipsters alike… no. Surely not. Can’t be. But, after putting my snobby sensibilities aside, I gave it a chance and was pleasantly surprised. This record is full of gems: brilliant lyrics, perfect harmonies, complex melodies and expert musicality. As much as I tried to push this one away, it found me and hooked into me deeply.

Listen to “Little Lion Man”.

Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me

This new album is incredibly ambitious; a sprawling, three-disc set of chamber pop and orchestrally dense harp songs. While this is Newsom’s most pop album to date, it also has incredibly sparse moments that challenge the listener. It’s not an easy listen but it’s incredibly rewarding. Each time I dip into this album I find something new; some new melody or idea that really just emphasizes how good this entire record is.

Listen to “Good Intentions Paving Company”.

Jónsi - Go

Sigur Ros has never been one of my all-time favorite bands. I like them, sure - I’d even say I like them a lot. But nothing in their repertoire compares to this solo album from the band’s frontman. This is a jovial, celebratory record full of upbeat rhythms and plain old fun. I was so surprised when I put this record on for the first time, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites of the year.

Listen to “Animal Arithmetic”.

The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever

Another spawn-of-Springsteen rock band, The Hold Steady returns with another slightly tipsy album about love and bars and growing up. This band puts out records about the good ol’ days and how those days haven’t changed, but things have gotten more complicated. They’re a consistently good band, although I’m really sad this album does not feature their keys player Franz Nicolay, who left the band for other pursuits (including playing in Against Me!, apparently).

Listen to “Hurricane J”.

The New Pornographers - Together

This is another perfect power pop record - brilliant songwriting, fun music, tons of upbeat moments… One of indie rock’s supergroups - featuring AC Newman, Neko Case and Dan Bejar of Destroyer - does it again. It’s just fun. Nothing to heavy to think about or process here (which you might find on a Neko Case or Destroyer album), just good music to turn up load and clap right along with.

Listen to “Crash Years”.

That’s it for records (although I’ve certainly got many, many more from this year…!). I’d also call out some individual tracks, like Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”, Avi Buffalo’s “What’s In It For?”, Fyfe Dangerfield’s “She Needs Me”, or Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Dandelion” as oft-repeaters in my playlists…. So, what are your favorites from the past six months?

First and foremost, it’s important to recognize the length of this song: 2:40. Any pop song under three minutes is already screaming to be played on the radio. Get in, express your ideas, get out.

Here’s what blows my mind about this song: every SINGLE part of this song is a hook. From the opening notes you are captured, riveted, and some part of this song will be stuck in your head for hours after you hear it. Everything from the percussion to the lead part to the BGVs to the bell part to the bass line — everything is memorable and remarkable. On top of that, so many portions of the song structure are recognizable despite such a small part of the song being the actual chorus.

The lyrics are goofy but you never once doubt the seriousness of it - he literally can’t help himself! He’s in love and he doesn’t care who knows, not even his lineup of background Tops.

I’d assert that this is THE classic pop song. If you make pop music, your music should strive for this level of hookiness. “I Gotta Feeling”, “Telephone”, etc - ain’t got nothing on this one. They come close, sure, but this has a certain magic that has been tough to top.

Next time you’re out with some friends and are feeling particularly ambitious, put this track on at karaoke. Similar to the recent episode of “House” where the entire male cast sang “Midnight Train to Georgia” (another classic) - no one could possibly follow you.

Trying a new project here at Fruit Tree Music - analyzing a classic track of it’s merit and why it’s so important to popular culture. Feel free to agree or disagree.

Alright, let’s talk about this Cocktail thing.

“Cocktail” is a codename for a new Apple product, a hybrid album concept that will certainly revolutionize the music industry and harken back to the “heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork while you listened to the music,” according to an unnamed executive.

Really?

People don’t sit around in a room and look at artwork anymore; they sit around in a room and play XBox.  The closest this could be is a Guitar Hero-styled game, a hybrid concept that actually *is* helping the music industry.

This initiative sounds like something crafted up by executives who’ve long since become obsolete, dreaming of the days when they could expense coke and women without having to use codenames on their expense reports. (These days you call them Fruit and Flowers, if anyone is keeping score.)

Ideally this new product would roll out on the new Apple Tablet device; oddly enough, it sounds like many industries are hoping this is their silver bullet.  This is the Kindle killer, the netbook decimator, and now the music industry’s saving grace.

The Cocktail concept, it sounds like, is enhanced PDFs that come alongside an album that provide extra content.  Adobe has built the PDF platform to be able to embed video, enhanced links, etc — I’m sure this is the technology they’re hoping to harness for Cocktail.  My question is, do people really care that much about PDFs and extra content?  The executive quoted above used the term “ancillary” to describe the pieces; most of the time only superfans and geeks try out ancillary concept products, and most people don’t care about a PDF.  I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to be content that most people expect to get for free on an artist website and are now being asked to pay a premium to see it on a pretty Apple screen.

Of course, Apple’s an expert at content delivery - providing an incredible experience to deliver the mediocre content of the music, film, photo, and TV industries, not to mention holding onto all the content that you and I generate all day long.  This could be really cool, assuming the music biz doesn’t muck it up.  That said, Fake Steve thinks this thing is fake and just another rumored add-on to another killer Apple product.

I’m not holding my breath that this will do anything amazing; I think it’ll just be another piece of product Apple can sell in their iTunes store.  From tracks to albums to videos to movies to apps to whatever this is, and beyond, Apple is just adding more incremental sales to what started as a track-based music store.  The best content on each platform will rise to the top and everything else is just going to compete in the noise.  This noise is already resonating all over record labels, with executives e-blasting these articles around and closed door meetings taking place to get ready for it — and we don’t even know what the product is yet!

Seriously, though — I bet the only way this “cocktail” will keep people in a room staring at it is if it’s a literal drug cocktail. Maybe Apple’s become a medical marijuana dispensary and this is their new rollout of that product line.  Elegantly packaged dimebags stamped with “Grown by Apple in California”, the iPot will revolutionize the music business; you heard it here first.

[quote via Financial Times]

There’s an awful lot of talk about mobile computing, the cloud, and streaming content and media these days.  I hear all the time how in “the future” we won’t have a hard drive in our computer, but rather a giant RAM bank that accesses a super-fast wireless internet connection and pulls content from remote servers.

Sure, I think that’s true.  However, I don’t think people (yes, even young people) are quite ready for the switch to happen.  It’s evident in the numbers: Rhapsody, the dominant leader in streaming music, boasts their 800,000 subscribers as real progress. Meanwhile iTunes is reaching for 7 billion track downloads in the lifetime of their service…. Something doesn’t add up here.

Streaming music pundits call access the future, triumphing over the concept of ownership.  At the moment I think access is overwhelming people: you have everything in the history of recorded music at your fingertips, but you can’t seem to get past the first few search terms you enter into the site. That or you build a static playlist that stagnates and becomes obsolete as you find out about new music from other sources.

On the other side, the concept of “ownership” is all around us and is far from being over.  Even a toddler, the streaming music industry’s future generation of hope, calls a toy “mine!” and understands that concept through and through. It’s going to take a major sea change to reverse this concept with streaming content, and not many have gotten it right yet.

I believe there are two problems here. The first one is oddly enough, hidden in user interface. The second is in the concept of music acquisition and choice.

First, user interface:

Companies like Rhapsody, Hulu, Zune, etc., all tout the enormous catalog beneath their collective hoods.  Zune even uses this as a marketing point against the cost of filling an iPod (a preposterous statement, but that’s not why we’re here).  The problem I see with these services is that there hasn’t been a beautifully simple option to “bind up” all the music one enjoys in the service.

Like I mentioned earlier, you give someone limitless choice and they stare at you blankly; paradoxically, let them open up their vast iTunes library and they can still find something they like.  The obvious reason? That individual loaded their library and has the ability to add, modify or delete songs or albums as they so choose.

The “library” in Rhapsody or other major streaming services only holds content that individual has purchased from that service - a la mp3 or full length download, not content being streamed in the service.

I fully believe that if a streaming provider can generate a library-style experience — one where a user knows what they likes and can corral it all together.  I’m not talking about playlists (like imeem), I’m talking a “this is what I always want nearby” section of a streaming service.  If a company can do this and get it launched globally (I’m looking at you, Spotify), the streaming nut will be cracked.

Oh — I mentioned Hulu earlier, and I also think they and Netflix have it wrong: do people really enjoy a “queue” of streaming content they can go through linearly? I surely don’t; my Netflix instant queue has a random assortment of films in it and I’m constantly jogging up and down the list to find things.  That’s another user interface mis-step that probably won’t change because the “queue” concept is Netflix’s core philsophy. Oh well.

Now, the second issue about choice.  Today music consumption is at an all-time high, despite record business declines.  The reason here is that the consumer has a nearly endless source of consumption outlets.  All these outlets - Amazon MP3, iTunes, emusic, heck, even BitTorrent - are all trying to gain users and market influence.  They often do this at their own expense, offering deals and discounts (or in BitTorrent’s case, free) on content to gain a user base.

So far what we’ve seen is a digital consumer who’s not afraid to try multiple services.  If you buy an Amazon album for $1.99, they’ve gotten you to install their downloader on your machine; their logic is, next time you’re browsing you might just hit that buy button now that the initial pain is out of the way.  That said, the digital-savvy consumer is really more of a music consumer than anything — they just want the song.  So, why isn’t Rhapsody’s limitless catalog dominating our computer speaker lifestyle?

The answer is because digital-savvy people don’t spend their life in front of one application, in front of one computer.  They often have a home computer, a work computer, a car stereo with MP3 jack, an iPod, maybe a cell phone with MP3 capabilities, a satellite radio, on and on…. There are so many places with music literally adding to the noise; how is one streaming provider supposed to cut through?

Rhapsody believes the answer is ubiquity. Not only do they have their web-enabled service and their client app-based service, but they’ve also reached into third party hardware like Sonos, TiVo, plus cable boxes from Time Warner, Comcast and Roadrunner.  They’re trying to find other places their subscriber lives and offer the experience there too; they do this because they get, 100%, that people don’t sit in front of their computers to experience their music.

They also have a major partnership with Verizon Wireless and you’d be a fool to think they’re not working on mobile applications to work on various popular smartphones.  They’re hoping for a userbase that always comes to them first for their music because Rhapsody is anywhere they might find themselves.

Honestly I think that’s the only way a streaming provider like that can claim dominance in a world where every soda cap contains a free MP3: the streaming service has to beat everyone else to the punch.

[inspired by this crunchgear article, which I don’t agree with at all]

So local and national news outlets are reporting that for the first time in six months, our unemployment numbers have improved. The employment rate ticked up a couple percentage points (totaling 6.69 million unemployed in the US alone) — which on the surface actually projects hope in a desperate time.

Problem is, the Labor Department generates the unemployment data on a shaky set of conditions.  The big hole one can poke in their data is the term “extended unemployment” - this is a group of people who have not found, or stopped looking for, work in excess of a six month period.

Basically, if you’ve been out of work for longer than six months, the government no longer counts you as unemployed - since you’re not really trying to find more work, right?  What this means is, our career unemployed masses went from one Labor Dept spreadsheet to another, which showed the net gain.

The news is trying to spin this positive but the bitter truth is we’re still losing jobs.  The actual unemployment rate with these extended unemployment individuals counted in… it’s a staggering 16.4% unemployed. 14.5 million people.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s unemployment rose to 10.7%, a 26 year high.  This is terrifying.

You know what makes me feel better? That’s right, The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog.

[Positive stats via New York Times]

[Soul-crushing, negative stats via NPR]

I’ve got a huge mancrush on JJ Abrams.  Seriously, the guy can do no wrong.  I loved Cloverfield, I faithfully watch Fringe, and I’m beyond obsessed with LOST.  Like, holding meetings at work to deconstruct theoretical physics and hieroglyphics obsessed.

He’s got this thing, the Mystery Box, a concept and object that I’m enamored with. The basic story is, his dad bought him a grab bag style box from a magic shop when he was a kid - just a plain, brown box with a big question mark on the front.

Most kids would open it up right away and play with the handful of baubles waiting inside — but JJ Abrams is not like most kids.  He still has the box TO THIS DAY, unopened.  This is what his whole creative philosophy hinges on: the mystery of what’s in the box is infinitely more enjoyable than what’s actually in the box.

Brilliant, right?  It works, too; I’ve spent numerous hours mining information on seldom-visited Wikipedia pages and discussing theories to prep for 42 minutes of television each week.  The man’s a genius.

And so, with this in mind, I literally sprinted into the Opry Mills IMAX theatre to secure a middle-of-room, center-of-row seat for his revival of the Star Trek franchise.  I was expecting a lot, and I’m proud to say he delivered well above my expectations. The mystery this film presented contained some familiar terms: time travel, destiny, relativistic physics…. I was thrilled.

Since I’m kind of a film sound geek, I have to dork out on this for a minute.  Things I noticed that blew my mind:

• The mind meld soundscape was incredible. I was jealous of whoever got to chop up the iconic voice of Leonard Nimoy and swirl it around in the surrounds.
• The red matter sequence at the end. Unbelievable, crazy sound design, which I hope was conducted by Ben Burtt. My jaw dropped, literally.
• I’ll say it again — Ben Burtt did sound design. Enough said. I hope he dragged a big box of old tape reels into JJ’s office and started playing him handcrafted sounds from ‘77.

On a related note, the courtroom scene (yes, the one with Tyler Perry) had a slew of Blue Microphone’s Mouse all over every podium in the room. It was comical, but to their credit they’re a futuristic little mic.

Visually the film was stunning, too. I was surprised to see a slick action/sci-fi outlet use so many handheld shots and anamorphic lenses (which generate those crazy lens flares). It was just a hair distracting but they nailed the style they were aiming for.

I think the cast was incredible; the casting was spot-on and the acting was totally believable.  In every character, you can see the beginning blossoms of the future characters from the original TV series and movies. Just amazing.  There were just enough of the original catch phrases to keep us geeks happy without making it inaccessible to everyone else in the theatre.

All in all I thought the film was a knockout, a perfect balance of homage and new interpretations of an old classic.  It’s a flag firmly planted in the ground of US pop culture, at last declaring sci fi to be cool.