As always, friends, I’d like to thank you for reading this year — it’s been the absolute best year I’ve had doing Rawkblog and as a music writer and photographer in general. Here’s a summary of this year’s essential and most popular posts.
Merry Christmas, pals. Enjoy this while it lasts. I believe it, Sufjan Stevens’ collaboration with the National’s Dessner brothers, was recorded in 2006.
[Update: The tracks are no longer available. You can download a free, excellent Stevens bootleg here and listen to "Silent Night" below.]
File under: Tours we wish were coming to L.A., though I did catch both Tokyo Police Club and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and their best-of-2010 jams around town this year. Dates via SSLYBY.
As fans of Christmas and Sufjan Stevens well know, the singer records an EP of holiday-themed music ever year. The first five volumes were released as a box set; the sixth, done with the National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner as well as the Arcade Fire’s Richard Parry, remains in the Sufjan archives. Per Consequence of Sound, the Dessners finally shared a pair of the EP’s eight songs on BBC6 recently — the whole set’s great (you’ll have to take my word for it) but here’s one they played on-air.
My year in photography was one of short bursts: my first time at SXSW, which was probably the best week of my life; band after band at Matador at 21; a handful of scattered shows in between. (I went to, but did not shoot, Coachella. Sigh.) Not to mention my first photo exhibition (!) in June. Hopefully I’ll shoot a little more regularly next year in anticipation of RAWKSHOTS: Part Deux.
A few of my favorite shows from this year, in no particular order: Coachella: Local Natives, Jay-Z, Deerhunter, Beach House, Pavement, Thom Yorke (nearly forgot I saw Thom Yorke this year, whoa) Matador at 21: Spoon, Belle & Sebastian, Sonic Youth SXSW: Miles Kurosky, International Waters, Puro Instinct, ARMS, Ben Gibbard, Rose Elinor Dougall, Midlake In general: The really amazing Slumberland 20th anniversary show at the Echo with Pants Yell! and Rose Melberg, that Weezer secret show, Kisses at In The City, Sondre Lerche at the Mondrian, Jens Lekman at the Mondrian, Miles Kurosky at the Echo, Baths at the Echoplex, the Clientele at the Echoplex (and also at Spaceland)
Since I’ve already made my feelings about rankings, best-ofs and lists in general clear, here are a few things you need to know about 2010: For those of us nerdy and foolhardy enough to keep up with Internet indie culture, there were more “relevant” albums to listen to than ever before. Thanks to a blogosphere in which any band with an MP3 can find someone to like them (and in which I caught a lot of shit for saying a few bands sucked without paragraphs of justification ), I spent nearly as much time investigating bullshit trends as I did attempting to listen to albums that were actually good. Making matters worse was the embarrassing coincidence of indie heroes from the Arcade Fire to James Mercer’s Broken Bells to Broken Social Scene to the Hold Steady — the Hold Steady! — making the most average, unexciting albums possible. And finally, while release dates have been a joke since Kid A leaked a decade ago, in 2010, a number of bands decided to start dropping albums on Bandcamp or Topspin or whatever whenever they damn well felt like it — which is great and progressive but also means I was stumbling into really good new records (Mighty Clouds! Summer Fiction!) days before putting this thing together. (it is also presumably the reason why the Dirty Projectors/Bjork mini-album did not blow everyone’s minds.)
All that said: If you like music, every year is a good year for music, and I’m happy to have sorted through a considerable amount of witch house, garage fuzz and indie R&B (pro tip: coming from Minneapolis does not make you Prince) to arrive at this very worthy top 50. One more word on rankings: this list is basically tallied by “How much do I want to listen to this album again when it is not actually on?,” a measure that skews toward three-minute pop songs and away from Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom ‘s occasionally brilliant self-indulgence marathons. Sorry, folks. O.K., enough preamble: here we go. Read the rest of this entry »
In the five years or so I’ve been doing this, I can’t remember a better year for songs. I actually spent most of Saturday ordering a top 100, went a little crazy and decided nobody needed me to rank seven hours of tracks. So here’s a top 50. Every single one of these tracks is incredible, and yes, even Ke$ha. For the record, I allowed two songs per band in a few special cases because not including both Sally Seltmann jams would be a lie (though I did cut two Best Coast songs). Also, No. 51 is Lady Gaga (“Telephone”) and if Nicki Minaj had done all the verses on “Monster,” it’d be No. 1 (but you already knew that). Have at it: Read the rest of this entry »
I always assume my readers mostly agree with me or they wouldn’t be here, but that’s not always the case — sometimes, Britney Spears is your most anticipated album of 2011. All the absurd glory of the 2010 Rawky Awards after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
File under: Tours we wish were coming to L.A., though I did catch both Tokyo Police Club and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and their 
As fans of Christmas and Sufjan Stevens well know, the singer records an EP of holiday-themed music ever year. The first five volumes were released as a box set; the sixth, done with the National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner as well as the Arcade Fire’s Richard Parry, remains in the Sufjan archives. Per 
