Even though I do plenty of searching on my own, Pitchfork Magazine always helps me to orient my musical compass and I wait all year for their top songs/albums lists. After looking through the top 50 albums of 2010, I can say that I'm mostly happy. To start off, here are a few albums I'm thrilled to see on the list: -"Crazy for you" Best Coast -"At Echo Lake" Woods -"One Life Stand" Hot Chip -"Forget" Twin Shadow -"Halcyon Digest" Deerhunter -"Swim" Caribou -"This is Happening" LCD Soundsystem -"Innerspeak" Tame Impala -"King of the Beach" Wavves
These are albums I've grown pretty attached to during the year and am happy to see get the proper recognition. However, there is one album on the list that made me blurt out "What the shit?" and that album was Vampire Weekend's "Contra". To me, the album was no more than ok and I feel like there was already a slot set aside for VW just because they released another album in 2010.
"Contra" was just as pretentious (see "Horchata" for example) as the band's first release but without the tight songwriting and sense of organization. It isn't even easy for me to hate on "Contra" because I sincerely loved VW's first album and waited patiently for a followup. The result was a poorly written album that sometimes hits the mark but only after many annoyingly aimless meanderings. I am a little disappointed to see Pitchfork taken in by the hype surrounding "Contra" but other than that, they were pretty dead on this year. Take a look.
I don't normally agree with Pitchfork, nor did I agree with their top fifty in the slightest, aside from their number one, but I do agree with you on Contra. I just posted a similar review of it on my blog. It really is a huge disappointment after their debut.
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