PSF's 2010 Writers' Poll
Our favorite things

Left to right: The Eels, Gil Scott-Heron, Kemialliset Ystavat, Janelle Monae, Guitar Shorty

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Can it already be another year and another poll of our PSF writers? Guess so and that means that our crew lets loose with 20 of their favorite albums (or less if they like). Also note that some of the lists are kind of unconventional (which we approve of, needless to say). As usual, we don't tally up the results to find out whoever's most popular here. Instead, we hope you can take the time to wade through the selections and find some undiscovered gems or records you just didn't know came out this year. Or maybe you'll find some comfort that one of your faves is here or get mad that some albums you hated made the list. In any case, let the musical conversations and arguments flow. Enjoy!

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Colin Buttimer

• Actress Splazsch
  
• Akira Rabelais Caduceus
  
• ANBB Mimikry
  
• Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea
  
• David Sylvian Sleepwalkers
  
• Demdike Stare Tryptych
  
• Dino Saluzzi El Encuentro
  
• Food Quiet Inlet
  
• Francois Couturier Un Jour Si Blanc
  
• John Foxx Cathedral Oceans (reissue)
  
• Oneohtrix Point Never Returnal
  
• Stereolab Not Music
  
• Steve Tibbetts Natural Causes
  
• Stian Westerhus Pitch Black Star Spangled
  
• The Knife Tomorrow In A Year
  
• Underworld Barking
  
• Various Vertical Integration (Second Language)
  

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Anders Bylund

• OK Go Of the Blue Color of the Sky (Don't you just love jangly indie-rock tunes like This Too Shall Pass?)
  
• The Apples In Stereo Travellers in Space and Time (It only took two decades to find mainstream success.)
  
• Robyn Body Talk (Pt. 1 and Pt. 2) (The best of Swedish dance-pop today.)
  
• Steve Ouimette EPIC (Session musician shows his songwriting chops -- and it's all good.)
  
• Natalie Merchant Leave Your Sleep (Welcome back from your too-long hiatus, Natalie.)
  
• Kent En plats i solen (Radiohead finally meets Depeche Mode.)
  
• Armin van Buuren Mirage (Master of the trance floor strikes again, and how!)
  
• She & Him Volume Two (Instant classic: If You Can't Sleep.)
  
• Of Montreal False Priest (More Elephant 6? Yes, please.)
  
• Eels End Times (One beautiful dirge after another.)
  

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Jorge Luis Fernandez

• Anika Anika
  
• Supersilent Supersilent 11
  
• Gonjasufi A Sufi And A Killer
  
• Sun City Girls Funeral Mariachi
  
• Andrew Chalk The Cable House
  
• Philip Jeck An Arc For The Listener
  
• Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Before Today
  
• Disappears Lux
  
• Beach House Teen Dream
  
• Naked On The Vague Heaps Of Nothing
  
• Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. In 0 To Infinity
  
• Deerhunter Halcyon Digest
  
• White Hills White Hills
  
• Emeralds Does It Look Like I’m Here?
  
• Barn Owl Ancestral Star
  
• A Sunny Day In Glasgow Autumn, Again
  
• Mariano Rodriguez Cypress Shadow
  
• Richard Youngs Inceptor
  
• The Books The Way Out
  
• Nite Jewel Am I Real? EP
  
• Kemialliset Ystavat Ullakkopalo
  
• Dustin Wong Infinite Love
  
• Phonophani Krekken
  
• Forest Swords Dagger Paths
  

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Michael Freerix

Bestenliste 2010

Not a lot of music from germany on my list. At least I bought the first NEU!-Record on vinyl as reissue, but it sort of sucks to put them on the best of 2010-list. There was much more very good music on my turntable this year. I'd rather mention a very good film: Un prophet by Jacques Audiard, nominated for an oscar, which it deserved, but didn't get. Life is unkind.

• Turbonegro Retox
  
• Lonelady Nerve Up
  
• John Zorn Filmworks XXI
  
• Cyanide Pills Cyanide Pills
  
• Harlem Hippies
  
• The Bundles The Bundles
  
• Holly Golightly and The Brokeoffs Medicine County
  
• Giant Sand Provisions
  
• Black Keys Brothers
  
• Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
  
• Schwabinggrad Ballett Schwabinggrad Ballett
  
• Bert Jaensch The Black Swan
  
• The Flying Lizards The Secret Dub Life of the Flying Lizards
  
• Little Women Throat
  
• Frazey Ford Obadiah
  
• Robert Wilkins That's No Way To Get Along
  
• Mississippi John Hurt Blessed Be The Name
  
• Dum Dum Girls I Will Be
  
• Les Georges Leningrad Sur les Traces de Black Eskimo
  
• Black Strobe A Remix Collection
  
• Dead Brothers 5th Sin-Phonie
  

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Gary Gomes

• King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King (reissue)
  
• The Nice Fillmore East, 1969
  
• Frank Zappa Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1978.
  
• Soft Machine Drop
  
• Hatfield and the North (reissue)
  
• Sonny Rollins Way Out West (reissue)
  
• Captain Beefheart The Mirror Man Sessions and Safe As Milk (I would like to vote for Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off, Baby", two of the greatest albums ever made, in memoriam of Don Van Vliet, who passed on December 17, 2010.) (reissues)
  
• Henry Cow Box Set (yes, I know it was 2009, but I didn't vote last year)
  
• Magma Box Set (see Henry Cow above)
  
• Genesis 1970-1975 (see above)
  
• Simak Dialog (any release)
  
• Soft Machine Legacy (any release)
  
• The Great Kat (any release)
  

A few of my releases are from 2009. I started a doctoral program in 2009; I missed some things.

Punk seems to gain more ascendancy as the economy winds down. I am one of those people who lived through punk and can see "little redeeming social value" in it, its antecedents, or its successors. Weirder or more experimental forms enjoy greater popularity when the economy is better, proving Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption. Beefheart, Willem Breuker, and (a personal loss for me) Enrique Jardines, friend, bass player and composer of Absolute Zero. I am paying more attention to people like Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Peter Brotzmann, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. I hope they all live as long as Elliot Carter.

Soft Machine, Vanilla Fudge (better than you remembered), Sonny Rollins, Captain Beefheart, Cecil Taylor (with the Art Ensemble of Chicago), early Genesis (better than you knew), and even recent Magic Band (without Beefheart) videos are now available on You Tube , as well as Carl Ruggles's Sun Treader; and talking cats and sock monkeys. Good times!

I enter 2011 with guarded optimism, that the economy will recover well and we will have many new weird things to enjoy!

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Jason Gross

• Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
  
• Codeine Velvet Club Codeine Velvet Club
  
• Broken Bells Broken Bells
  
• V.V. Brown Travelling Like the Light
  
• Youssou N'Dour Music From the Motion Picture 'I Bring What I Love'
  
• Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Crazy Heart
  
• The Upsidedown The Town With Bad Wiring
  
• Nneka Concrete Jungle
  
• Buddy Guy Living Proof
  
• Girl Talk All Day
  
• Ghostface Killah Apollo Kids
  
• Quasi American Gong
  
• The Knux Fuck You EP
  
• Surfer Blood Astrocoast
  
• Dum Dum Girls I Will Be
  
• Patti Griffin Downtown Church
  
• Arcade Fire The Suburbs
  
• Johnny Cash American VI- Ain't No Grave
  
• Grupo Fantasma Existential
  
• Maxilla Blue Volume 2
  

A full list of all of my faves of the year are on my Ye Wei blog

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Richard Haslop

Rather than necessarily my favourites of the year, I thought I’d list, alphabetically, 20 albums, including a couple from South Africa, worth seeking out that might otherwise have been missed unless one was paying fairly close attention.

• Sam Amidon I See The Sign
  
• Barn Owl Ancestral Star
  
• Benguela Black Southeaster
  
• The Black Twig Pickers Ironto Special
  
• Chicago Underground Duo Boca Negra
  
• Marilyn Crispell / David Rothenberg One Dark Night I Left My Silent House
  
• Food Quiet Inlet
  
• Otis Gibbs Joe Hill’s Ashes
  
• Erdem Helvacioglu & Per Boysen Sub City 2064
  
• Micah P. Hinson Micah P. Hinson & the Pioneer Saboteurs
  
• Carlo Mombelli & the Prisoners of Strange Theory
  
• Mountain Man Made The Harbor
  
• Doug Paisley Constant Companion
  
• The Parting Gifts Strychnine Dandelion
  
• Emily Portman The Glamoury
  
• Tamikrest Adagh
  
• Cath & Phil Tyler The Hind Wheels Of Bad Luck
  
• Various Music Of Central Asia Vols 7-9
  
• Various Next Stop ... Soweto Vols 1-3
  
• Chris Wood Handmade Life
  

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Billy Hell

• Swans My Father will guide me up a rope to the sky (limited edition double disc tour version)
  
• Bardo Pond Bardo Pond
  
• Rangda False Flag
  
• Dead C Patience
  
• Killing Joke Absolute Dissent
  

Left to right: Naked on the Vague, Carlo Mombelli, Barn Owl

Domenic Maltempi

• Purling Hiss Hissteria
  
  
• The Fresh and Onlys Play it Strange
  Lime goes in the brown stuff--dates swim team beauty before rancid rain storm destroys earth and its groves
  
  
• These New Puritans Hidden
  They mean it- and its classical rubber on long legs—wonderfully shod to kick you evasively and without guile --- J. G Ballard canopy fight--- for the last licks of radiating bright stuff.
  
  
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists The Brutalist Bricks
  
  
• Flying Lotus Cosmogramma
  Keep giving this sort of birth.
  
  
• No Age Everything In Between
  A grower, a stain(er) -- a well dyed sunset
  
  
• The Art Museums Rough Frame
  
  
• Gonjasufi A Sufi and a Killer
  
  
• Ariel Pinks Haunted Graffiti Before Today
  
  
• Twin Sister Color your life EP
  
  
• Moon Duo Escape
  
  
• Owen Pallett Heartland
  Both thoughtful and playful, mood regulating and mood altering — great anecdote to a lot of stuff lab led ‘indie’
  
  
• The Alps Le Voyage
  
  
• Deer Hunter Halcyon Digest
  
  
• 100 Jahre Einsankeit Markus Detmer Plays Staubgold
  
  
• Caribou Swim
  
  
• Deer Hunter Halcyon Digest
  A beautiful record in many ways. It’s obvious why it didn’t burn the oh so hidden new tastemakers tongue with its crepitating sling shot body
  
  
• Art Museums Rough Frame
  

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James Nadal

• Cachete Maldonado y los Majaderos Rumba Boricua Campesina
  
• Jeff Lorber Fusion Now Is The Time
  
• Miss Sophie Lee Tallulah Moon
  
• Lynn Baker QuartetAzure Intention
  
• Pedro Bermudez No Limits
  
• Amiona Figarova Sketches
  
• Regina Carter Reverse Thread
  
• Ray Vega & Thomas Marriot East-West trumpet Summit
  
• Willie Hones III The Next Phase
  
• Azar Lawrence Mystic Journey
  
• Brettina Brettina
  
• Yanvablue Haitian Earthquake Relief
  
• Fidel Morales & Proyecto Nega Salsa Son Timba (re-release)
  
• Message to Venus EP
  

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Jack Partain

• State Champion Stale Champagne
  
• The Gay Blades Savages
  
• The Black Keys Brothers
  
• Beach House Teen Dream
  
• Isobel Campbel and Mark Lanegan Hawk
  
• any bootleg recording of that Lou Reed / Laurie Anderson concert in Australia that only dogs could hear
  

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Randy Patterson

• Santana Guitar Heaven
  
• Nili Brosh Through The Looking Glass
  
• Eric Clatpon Clapton
  
• Pearl Little Immaculate White Fox
  
• Bruce Kulick BK3
  
• Peter Frampton Thank Your Mr. Churchill
  
• Jimi Hendrix Valleys of Neptune
  
• The Dave Getz Breakaway Can’t Be The Only One
  
• Eclypse Something To Believe In
  
• Gary Wright Connected
  
• Bada** Black Robot
  
• Lo-Pro The Beautiful Sounds of Revenge
  
• Carole King & James Taylor Live At The Troubadour
  

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Marc Philips

• Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid
  
• The Black Keys Brothers
  
• Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street (deluxe 2010 reissue)
  
• Morrissey Bona Drag (20th anniversary version)
  
• Boy Eats Drum Machine 20 Beats
  
• Big Boi Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
  
• Campfire OK Strange Like We Are
  
• Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea
  
• John Mellencamp No Better Than This
  
• DJ DUS Soy Yo
  
• Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
  
• Tom Jones Praise and Blame
  
• Deerhunter Halcyon Digest
  
• Arcade Fire The Suburbs
  
• Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise
  
• Sufjan Stevens The Age of Adz
  
• Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone
  
• Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer
  
• REM Fables of the Reconstruction (25th anniversary version)
  
• LCD Soundsystem This Is Happening
  

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Diane Roka

Top 5 Concerts for Drawings in 2010

• Charlotte Gainsbourg -- IRM Theater of the Living Arts -- January 22, 2010
  
  
  
• Ray LaMontagne -- God Willing and the Creek Won't Rise World Cafe Live "Free at Noon" -- August 20, 2010
  
  
  
• Warpaint -- The Fool Voyeur Nightclub -- December 3, 2010
  
  
  
• Jon Langford & Skull Orchard -- Old Devils World Cafe Live "Free at Noon" -- November 19, 2010
  
  
  
• Donavon Frankenreiter -- Glow World Cafe Live "Free at Noon" -- November 26, 2010
  

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Ethan Stanislawski

• Grinderman Grinderman 2
  
• Vampire Weekend Contra
  
• Sleigh Bells Treats
  
• Wavves King of The Beach
  
• Galactic Ya-Ka-May
  
• Titus Andronicus The Monitor
  
• The White Stripes Under The Great White Northern Lights
  
• Red Pens Reasons
  
• LCD Soundsystem & Others Greenberg Soundtrack
  
• Gogol Bordello Transcontinental Hustle
  
• Charlotte Gainsbourg IRM
  
• OK Go Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky
  
• Black Keys Brothers
  
• Marnie Stern Marnie Stern
  
• Gorillaz Plastic Beach
  
• The National High Violet
  
• Free Energy Stuck On Nothing
  
• Paul Weller Wake Up The Nation
  
• Of Montreal False Priest
  
• The Intelligence Males
  

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Marko Vukusic

• The Black Keys Brothers
  
• Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers Mojo
  
• Sharon Jones And The Dap Kings I Learned The Hard Way
  
• The Budos Band III
  
• Paul Weller Wake Up The Nation
  
• Gogol Bordello Trans-Continental Hustle
  
• Mike Patton Mondo Cane
  
• Guitar Shorty Bare Knuckle
  
• Drive-by Truckers The Big To-do
  
• Gil-Scott Heron I'm New Here
  
• Watermelon Slim Ringers
  

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Kurt Wildermuth

This year, artists I like--Los Lobos, Spoon, Laura Veirs, Rufus Wainwright--put out decent, occasionally great efforts that don't measure up to their best work. Live music meant a lot more to me than new recordings:

Fireworks Ensemble: Performing Ulrich Krieger's transcription of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Miller Theater @ Columbia University, 2/5 - Convinced me that interesting stuff is going on in the mayhem.

Hallogallo 2010: Performing the music of Michael Rother and Neu!, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, 8/6 - Rother and friends' motoric grooves were repetitious by nature, hypnotic in a druggy way, unsatisfying only in that there were no encores.

Anne-Sophie Mutter and the New York Philharmonic: Performing mainly Mozart's "Violin Concertos" Nos. 1, 3, and 5 @ Lincoln Center, 11/18 - Extraordinarily precise, expressive, and evocative.

Spiritualized: Performing Ladies and Gentleman, We Are Floating in Space @ Radio City Music Hall, 7/30: A strong case for the CD as a tone poem or something like that.

Edgard Varese: International Contemporary Ensemble, So Percussion, the New York Philharmonic, and others performing (R)evolution [complete works], 7/19-20 - An education and a once-in-a-lifetime experience?

Roger Waters: Performing The Wall at Madison Square Garden, 10/6 - A brilliant showman, Waters did justice to his masterpiece.

The Wedding Present: Performing selected songs and Bizarro in its entirety at South Street Seaport, 8/13 - Dave Gedge's rhythm guitar is a force of nature.

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Mike Wood

• Moon Pearl Pearl Jams
  
• Neil Young Le Noise
  
• Earth A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra Capsular Extraction (Southern Lord reissue)
  
• Terry Ohms what-do-you-mean-what-do-I-mean
  
• Nels Cline Dirty Baby
  
• The Sailplanes Mild Peril
  
• Tindersticks Falling Down the Mountain
  
• Black River Black N Roll
  
• Various Artists Wonder Wheel Presents
  
• Henry Grimes/Rashid Ali Spirits Aloft
  

Left to right: Gonjasufi, Lo Pro, Killing Joke, Frazey Ford, Turbo Negro