Given the fairly diverse musical preferences on staff, a few individual favorites didn’t quite cut Sun On The Sand’s top 50 albums of 2010 and we’ve decided it’s high time to spotlight these releases. Be warned though, this is a rather long read. These are our honorable mentions of the year — posted in no particular order. Enjoy.
#50-41
#40-31
#30-21
#20-11
#10-1
Cowboy Junkies – Renmin Park
The sum is greater than the parts on Renmin Park, a challenging album by any standard. Written during Michael Timmins’ three-month visit to China, the album incorporates the ambient noises recorded walking around an unfamiliar country. Chinese children singing, parades, and cicadas buzzing create a unique din underneath the band’s signature sound. The grunts of an old man playing badminton become the rhythm loop on ‘Sir Francis Bacon At the Net’ — an ambitious idea that works far better than expected. This is as far from Paul Simon’s Graceland as you can get when exploring a different culture in music. The lyrics are sometimes hard to stomach as China’s indifference toward human rights doesn’t escape Timmins’ pen on songs like ‘Cicadas’ and ‘A Few Bags of Grain’. Singer Margo Timmins can usually make any lyric sound beautiful (see ‘Murder, Tonight, In the Trailer Park’ from Black Eyed Man). Here, the harsh realities of life in China give her voice an edge that scratches at your heart. But, the album is a work of love and the kindness of the people met on the journey far outweighs the difficult moments of crashing into an alien culture. On the title song, two lovers meet in a park for a simple waltz adorned by an acoustic guitar. It’s a simple moment captured beautifully on record. In a country that casts a long shadow over every action and thought, the simple moments cannot be taken for granted. – Jason Lent
Sarah Jaffe – Suburban Nature
For whatever reason, I just usually cannot get into many solo singer-songwriters. It might be that it’s been done so many times and so few manage to distinguish themselves, but whatever it is it doesn’t apply to Sarah Jaffe. Suburban Nature wasn’t anywhere near my radar until recommended to me, but when in a particular mood, there was not a better album this year. Unfortunately, that mood happens to be depressed and active, desperate and poised to make a drastic and terrible decision. Unlike a certain high-profile release, Jaffe manages to nail suburban doubt, insecurity, and regret without any overarching drama or pretense. Hers is a personal depiction, opting to express similar themes through intimate dialog instead of sprawling statements. The result is a tragic album, ceaselessly twinge-inspiring as it brings back every failed conversation and remembers suburban futility. Its not a fun listen, but ultimately one that is necessary and satisfying. – Paul Bulow
Skillz – Infamous Quotes
This was a great year for free, legal music in the hip hop community, and at the top of the endless torrent of mixtapes stood Skillz’s Infamous Quotes, a series of tracks co-produced with DJ Jazzy Jeff (yes, Will Smith’s old Fresh Prince running buddy, but move past that) and J.Period. The Virginia native is a renowned ghost writer and studio fixer who’s in the rolodex of every radio rapper. Chances are, your favorite hip hop star has utilized his distinct ear for adaptable beats and infectious hooks from time to time. This places the in-demand songsmith in the unique position of being relatively unknown, yet financially secure, which affords him the luxury to do as he pleases as it pertains to his own career. Though the whiplash-paced spitter released a proper commercial album this year, Infamous Quotes is much more indicative of his desire to emphasize the MCing element of the genre. The arrangements themselves are solid, utilizing an eclectic mix of samples tied together effortlessly, but they never take precedence. The rapping is at the forefront of each track and often in free verse, leaving the listener with nothing but pure battle verses and killer punchlines. – Todd Kearns
Afrirampo – We Are Uchu No Ko
Fun and frivolous do not necessarily walk hand in hand, despite the opposite view ballooning each time an indie-pop dullard is birthed and buoyed by the fickle embrace of the blogosphere. Mirth doesn’t live in solitary confinement waiting to be summoned by some prat with an urge to ride soporific beach vibes. It stems from overcoming one’s strife rather than overlooking it. Osaka psych-rock duo Afrirampo can evidently dig this sentiment, penning the most playful album of the year on its last hurrah by tousling, taunting, and ultimately trampling its bumps in the road. We Are Uchu No Ko is wonderfully two-faced, as its defining constituents — stirring shouts, mercurial tempos — intermittently harbor disquiet and euphoria. Stomping and sprinting through ‘Miracle Lucky Girls’ and ‘Tou Zai Nan Boku’, Oni and Pikacyu are in constant motion, smirking as they flank their grievances, wringing the will from their fetid shells with every frightening pace, locking the city in a concourse of gargantuan knots and introducing it to the mightiest of conflagrations. They’re sweating their ills into the ground, to cinder and smoke.
Once Afrirampo’s faceless perps have succumbed to the blaze, repose and exaltation take hold. Tender folk coda ‘Whyto’ is purer because of the cacophony which preceded it, ambient flutters and warbles announcing a new dawn for the fortunate who survived. It’s a select few, and it’s cause for celebration. ‘Yah Yah Yeah’ obliges, replete with massive drums, wailing guitars, prickly synths, and sanguine group vocals as the duo punches out its own exhilarating slab of J-pop. By the tail end of this daunting 82-minute hydra, Oni and Pikacyu drift off to sea on closer ‘Hoshu No Uta Pt. 5′, their inchoate glimpses of glee and manumission fully realized, bottled into one nascent cry for joy. – Vinh Cao
Teebs – Ardour
I was going to open this with some bit about how Teebs owes Flying Lotus a lot of love for basically creating the gltich hop genre or at least bringing it into some form of social consciousness, a feat achieved through his work on Adult Swim, his groundbreaking three full-lengths, the label he created that Teebs is currently signed to, etc., but I realized that wouldn’t be fair to either artist and certainly not to Teebs himself. Sure, Steven Ellison’s prolific fingerprints are all over Ardour, a zealous, tenacious record that reflects much of the ambition of FlyLo’s debut 1983 and the swagger present on his followup Los Angeles. But unlike Ellison, a man seemingly bent on turning every genre he touches into banger-fodder as seen on his almost overwhelmingly kinetic Cosmogramma, Teebs is more interested in exploring the more ambient and extreme reaches of instrumental hip hop, siding more with Four Tet than with FlyLo’s Basement Jaxx party anthem enthusiasm. Take, for example, his Toro-Y-Moi-esque chillwave turn on ‘Moments’, The Avalanches’ pseudo-tropical feel to ‘My Whole Life’, his Pantha-Du-Prince-nodding ‘Arthur’s Birds’, or the Boards Of Canada mock-up ‘Why Like This?’, all tracks that FlyLo would have blown up into gigantic, galactic tributes to music maximalism, but which Teebs kept within arms’ reach with his smoky production and unassuming drum programming. It’s as though Flying Lotus represents Brainfeeder’s id, the instinctual third that concerns itself with only eating, fucking, and surviving, while Teebs is the label’s superego, the part concerned with manners, with social acceptance, with keeping things on an even keel; both are parts of the same whole but necessitate each other, equally important parts on equal standing. – Brian Riewer
Foals – Total Life Forever
I was a little reluctant to include Total Life Forever as an honourable mention, but not because I was unsure if the album was worthy. On the contrary, this second album from Oxford’s Foals is perhaps too good to be part of an end-of-year afterthought. This is one of the most exciting and innovative indie-rock records I’ve heard in some time. Foals transformed themselves from the quirky, experimental sounds of their mostly charming debut into a monolith of indie perfection. One of the things I love the most about Total Life Forever is that it was unexpected. A new level of emotional depth was met with a newfound confidence of instrumentation. Centerpiece ‘Spanish Sahara’ is in my mind the greatest song of 2010. True, it’s a song that towers above the other offerings here but that shouldn’t be used to deflect praise away from the record as a whole. Even without ‘Spanish Sahara’, I have no doubt that ‘Blue Blood’, ‘Miami’, and ‘This Orient’ would have offered enough brilliance to have pushed Total Life Forever near the top of my year-end list. Any recognition earned is completely warranted and deserved for a band whose next steps will be much anticipated. – Matthew James
The Black Ryder - Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
If the year in music was judged by what received the most airplay in my 2000 Jeep Cherokee, The Black Ryder’s debut album would top the charts. Plenty of bands dabble in the fuzz of The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine but few achieve an entire album this achingly good. Aimee Nash and Scott Von Ryper share the vocal duties from song to song giving it different textures while layer upon layer of reverb and echo twist and turn around them. There’s a hint of dark country on ‘Sweet Come Down’ and ‘All That We See’ dances into Mazzy Star’s haze with wonderful results. The droning ‘Burn And Fade’ just keeps building and building for five minutes and then disintegrates note by note back into the black hole from which it came. With five songs running well past the five-minute mark, the music squirrels into your mind slowly until a new sonic landscape appears on the horizon and you just have to chase after it. – Jason Lent
Local Natives – Gorilla Manor (American Reissue)
There isn’t anything groundbreaking about a folk-rock album that layers harmonies on top of detailed percussion and pastoral backgrounds, hell The Dodos pull that off with just two members. But on their debut, Local Natives put their stamp on a well-trodden genre in the form of earnest R&B-influenced vocals, and a reputation built on frantic live performances that are just as tight as the album. Most impressive might be that the band is already aware of this. The opening piano lines of ‘Airplanes’ are greeted with a chorus of boos until the beat drops, a self-effacing moment almost out of place on a debut, but it works, and the song is the closest thing to soul-folk this side of Justin Vernon. It’s followed by ‘Sun Hands’, which is an absolute monster live. One thing the Natives have figured out is rhythm, and on stage everyone gets involved. On this particular track, guitarist and keyboardist drop what they’re doing to bang on various items on stage after the screaming chorus, resulting in a blissful freak-out proving Local Natives have the two most important characteristics of a young band: undeniable chops and boundless energy. – Paul Bulow
Rene Hell – Porcelain Opera
Oneohtrix Point Never had a relatively “big” year; emphasis on the safety quotes encasing “big.” Let me amend the last statement. The Brooklyn-based synth-driven experimentalists released their most press-acknowledged album to date and became a staple of best-of lists. Their success, along with other acts tenuously lumped with them — such as the more drone-oriented Emeralds or the dubby soul underneath the ambiance of Forest Swords — provided a blog foundation for post-Eno electronic noodling that was much more niche prior to this new, democratized web scene. It’s amazing to trace the indie press fixation with the folk revival of the mid-to-late 00s or the post-punk revival of a decade ago to newly vogue kraut descendants and synth-heavy wave music of the 80s. With that in mind, if ever Jeff Witscher had a chance to get a bit of that underground press pie, I’d have assumed it would have been this year, and yet his album Porcelain Opera, released under his (one of many) noms de guerre, Rene Hell, was released to hardly any fanfare.
Witscher addressed one of the most troubling aspects of ambient and electronic music since Brian Eno helped create the archetype in the 70s — how do you take a seemingly antiquated sound (and as great as Eno’s work was and is, that cold flutter of IBM-y tonal clusters can feel extremely anachronistic) and translate it to now? The answer is in the details. Synth patterns hover over an assortment of dashboard effects while tempering the disaffected digitization with chanting, as heard in ‘C.G. Mask’ and ‘L. Minx’, or held keyboard notes for a longer, droning effect to break through the machinery (‘IV 18:54′). The modernity also lies in how the effects are used. There are sound analogs used to create distinct, practical identifiers. ‘C.G. Mask’ sounds like running water near the end. A sped-up tape loop in ‘L. Minx’ sounds like a crying mouse underneath an unnerving, zapping techno beat. Whether Porcelain Opera becomes lovingly archaic in the most listenable of ways or a paranoid piece of timelessness remains to be seen, but at the moment, it too could revel in that not-so-marginalized electronic experimental sound that’s getting some of the blogosphere attention. – Todd Kearns
Pillars And Tongues – Lay Of Pilgrim Park
The waves are relentless. They cross swords with our sails and thrash the boat like caged rabid wolves, pernicious jaws anxiously awaiting the chance to tear into the poor souls ragdolled overboard. We can’t peer through the brume to gather our whereabouts, we can merely stay afloat and hope the tide is more hospitable than its first blush would betoken. Rescue looms on the minds of few, this is a dance we can’t weasel out of. Just let it come already, let the torrent of venom and bale wash over us, let it prick and pierce, let it gash. Then…subside. Chicago trio Pillars And Tongues sketches the final frames of a draining odyssey on its fourth LP Lay Of Pilgrim Park, hinting at great burdens but taking its deepest breaths in their waning moments — in the denouement.
Composed of little other than violin, double bass, percussion, and a robust baritone, the album affords itself ample room to revel in the resplendent grace of respite. The letup. While employing a spare lineup, these dirges are momentous, scintillant coronas safeguarding the final puffs of our toilsome passage. Solemn a capella number ‘Root/Joy’ is the first on the scene as Mark Trecka’s full-bodied pipes are coupled with weary harmonies, distending across boundless horizons to ensure the coast is clear. There’s anguish and apprehension — these voices threaten to crack imminently — but as the tones linger and dilate into further and further celestial vistas, misgivings disperse into the ether, swapped for cautious hope in the heart of the mist. On ‘The Center Of’, echoing drums and billowy female coos from the Sheila Chandra school of atmosphere adorn Trecka’s timbre which ever-slowly wakes from its slumber, wrestling for balance, relying heavily on its melodic counterparts during a pained rise back to its feet.
With its pluck restored, it traces a course homeward on ‘Made Sheen’, a riveting blend of neo-classical instrumentation and campfire freak-folk rapture. Drums tumble over themselves, ghostly harmonies emerge from the shadows, effulgent torch in hand, and Trecka’s eager voice reaches out miles beyond its grasp, straining for a much needed dose of serenity. The song thins out as it winds down, one man standing tall, armed with relief, but more importantly, belief. We’ve made sheen. We’re nearly there, it’s within eyeshot. The sempiternal gleam of resolution. – Vinh Cao
The-Dream – Love King
I kind of wanted to hate this album. I’m not exactly the type for modern R&B, seeing that my tastes default more towards the experimental, vague side of music rather than that genre’s literalism and that my worldview doesn’t line up very well with its misogynistic leanings, and that on some sick level of my psyche I feel I should maintain a sense of some “holier-than-thou” critical perspective, acting as though merely being catchy is not enough for an album to earn my praises, but I couldn’t help myself. In The-Dream’s defense, he does know what he’s doing as a producer, having thrown together genuinely addictive beats on ‘Make Up Bag’ and ‘Yamaha’ — the former a bouncy, dark rhythm built up from finger-snapping and pianos, the latter a little energetic, herky-jerky number — and strung multiple songs together seamlessly, with all nine minutes of ‘Sex Intelligent’ and its remix sounding like a single track and shifts from ‘Yamaha’ through ‘Abyss’ being unintelligible in some pseudo-prog-R&B mutation. But where I wanted to voice my distaste in his sometimes poor-to-borderline-offensive wordplay — namely, most of ‘F.I.L.A.’ and all of ‘Panties To The Side’ — and the pretty weak and hackneyed trio of songs that close out the album, I simultaneously found myself compulsively singing “L to the O, V to the E, K to the I, N to the G” in my head and starting the album over again. I want to have high doubts about his self-appointed title as Love King — his solution to infidelity is to “drop five stacks on that make up bag”, ugh — but then again, from what perspective can I make that judgment? I’m certainly not above his cooing persuasions. – Brian Riewer
New Found Land – The Bell
The Bell beguiles the listener from start to finish with a deceptive simplicity that immediately feels familiar but completely new. Dropping unexpected instruments into eclectic arrangements, the album’s diversity feels completely natural. The influences feeding New Found Land come from all over the world and each listen feels different than the last. A near perfect piece of indie-pop, ‘Holes’ spins a beautiful melody around some of the darkest lyrics on the album as Anna Roxenholt’s voice rises to the passion of the moment. It is followed by ‘Stay With Me’, an almost too personal conversation between her and a lover that you almost feel guilty eavesdropping on. Fortunately, the darker moments are balanced by infectious pop melodies so the album never loses momentum. The title track percolates and grooves as xylophone, horns, and the occasional strum of an acoustic guitar all jostle for attention under Roxenholt’s voice. It’s irresistible and weird. There is a touch of Regina Spektor’s style that holds ‘Human’ together but such clear cut comparisons are the exception on this album. Much like Beck, styles are turned upside down and convention thrown out the window when New Found Land hits record. – Jason Lent
Freeway & Jake One – The Stimulus Package
With all the huge hip hop albums that came out in 2010, a bunch of little albums got lost. Curren$y is the one name that keeps popping up, but efforts from Nas & Damian Marley and Revolutions Per Minute (Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek) went mostly unnoticed. Those are bad examples, in part, because they are both underwhelming, but on his first album with indie-rap icon Rhymesayers, former Roc lifer Freeway proves himself worthy of the spotlight. The jump from major to indie is a rare and difficult one. He’s helped along by spot-on beats from Jake One who accompanies the Freezer’s raspy bluster with horns and pounding bass, occasionally sliding into subtlety for storytelling. It’s an unlikely pairing, but a successful one and Freeway is a welcome addition to the underground scene, bringing a street edge and swagger that is frequently lacking. – Paul Bulow
Arandel – In D
This is not the beginning nor the end. Ever-shifting, ever-shambling, ever-shoreward, Arandel’s stunning 2010 offering is clearly indebted to Terry Riley — whose most renowned work this side of A Rainbow In Curved Air is probably In C — and mirroring the minimalist maven’s thirst for a greater truth, In D is a tireless sprawl, scouring through the dimmest annals of electronic art in its pursuit of satori. The yearning, nay, the hunt, is spooky as hell on straighter techno cuts ‘#1′, ‘#3′, and ‘#7′, stalking their prey behind a sinister shroud of mystery, laying beneath the rumbles of analog synths and baleful horns to maintain the menace of an attack throughout. However, it’s on the tracks least tied to the pulsating genre that In D truly flummoxes. The breakbeat dervish of ‘#9′ stomps and throttles its way through Hosianna Mantra‘s meditative swirls, bowling over our endless trifle on its climb to the edifying clouds whereas the bleary and bibulous vocal on ‘#6′ slogs down grimy backstreets, dazed by the flickering lights dangling at the end of the tunnel. Distorted piano keys pair with a wailing sitar on ‘#10′, disconcerted by the vast expanse still yet to have been conquered. Arandel doesn’t stumble upon sweeping or befitting answers, he’s in limbo evermore, bursting or slithering from door to door, trapped in the immutable gorge of the in-between. The track numbers don’t fall in line, the writings on the wall don’t add up, the arc is infinite. Loose ends soar and sag to the most remote nooks of our consciousness, eluding our grasp, jeering it, perpetually one galaxy ahead of their groggy, would-be snarers. No, this isn’t a tidy narrative. This is liminal techno. – Vinh Cao
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal
There’s something nightmarishly cosmic about this album, some force that dances around and throughout its length freely that gives Returnal its heft, a presence that is both too unbound and actual for this to really be “music”. Music, as I’ve always known it, has some distance between it and me, a critical gap in which its crests and lulls and my biases and expectations met from which I could observe, awed but unscathed. But Returnal is immediate, intoxicating, invasive; I breathe in and inhale a bit of ‘Pelham Island Road’, its chalky beginnings paralyzing me as its seven minutes of slow burn wreak havoc on me, unfolding the creases of my brain and reading my thoughts as I sit there, helpless and aware. ‘Where Does Time Go’ starts and instantly I’m extracted from this reality into some post-temporal dimension, drifting through the plasmic buildup of used days, weeks, months, years. ‘Describing Bodies’ and ‘Stress Waves’ pour in like a dense fog, every particle of it glowing with a bioluminescent green hue and somehow I know it’s sentient, it’s aware, it’s alive and conscious of my presence. Returnal feels like a matrix for our reality but not “the” Matrix, as the movie version is just a similarly assembled true reality to the faux one we live in daily, but rather, it is supra-reality, its essence being of but also above, greater, and omniscient of the level we operate on, a rendering of our existence onto a Tron-like grid blueprinting the mind of God. It’s not music or rather, not just music; Returnal has become a vehicle for the soul of the universe itself as well. – Brian Riewer
Paul Weller – Wake Up The Nation
Paul Weller truly is an amazing artist. Never mind what he did in bands such as The Jam and Style Council so many years ago, solo he has gone through so many phases and transitions that maybe his sudden revitalization over the past few years shouldn’t be too big a surprise. ‘Wake Up The Nation’ is full of so many ideas that it almost seems implausible that a songwriter over 30 years into their career can still be so inspired. Abbey Road is a clear reference point, perhaps not in sound but certainly in spirit, as the tracks here all melt into each other. His mood on this album changes as much as the styles he perfects. Without doubt his best work since Stanley Road and an album that at the end of the day may even rival Jam classics such as All Mod Cons, with this, Paul Weller’s legend continues to grow. – Matthew James
Bilal – Airtight’s Revenge
Upon the release of his debut album 1st Born Second in 2001, it seemed as if Philly soul sensation Bilal was on the verge of stardom. Musiq Soulchild, D’Angelo, and Maxwell had all released critical and commercial hits the year prior, securing the marketplace for solo neo-soul acts. In addition to a healthy sales climate for R&B acts, Bilal managed to sign to Interscope, known primarily for rap-rock/nu-metal acts and the hip hop artists under subsidiary Shady/Aftermath (ran by Eminem and Dr. Dre), as well as catching the attention of rap icon Dr. Dre, who championed the young crooner and helped produce his initial effort. Moreover, Bilal wooed a formidable collection of talented soul and rap producers to collaborate with (Questlove, J Dilla, Raphael Saadiq and the Soulquarians, among others). Unfortunately, the album peaked at 31 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold considerably under projections (but still managed to move over 300,000 copies, which convinced Interscope to keep him aboard).
After 1st Born Second, which garnered universal acclaim and comparisons to soul luminaries Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder among others, Bilal worked on his follow-up. Interscope hired various producers and songwriters to take a more label-guided approach in an attempt to craft something more populist. Yet the musician began experimenting more with the foundations of soul, integrating modal elements and largely attempting to produce the work himself. Bilal did not care for the label and A&R men’s attempts to finagle their way into steering the sound of the album. Bilal stood his ground, wrote his own work, and circumvented the label’s interference. The result of this was an eight-year stalemate between the label and the artist, in which his work was shelved. Undeterred, Bilal became a prolific collaborator, plying his talents to numerous guest spots for everyone from Jorge Ben to Erykah Badu and Little Brother.
Airtight’s Revenge is the culmination of his eight-year struggle. After the indefinite shelving of the follow-up album (and a lawsuit against Interscope which granted him his release, leading to his subsequent signing to the modest L.A. label Plug), Bilal was emancipated without a scratch and some cash from Interscope (from the aforementioned settlement) to record the album he wanted. Though 88-Keys, Nottz, and Tone Whitfield help produce, Airtight is almost entirely Bilal, and it shows. His comeback record is incredibly ambitious — running the gamut from fusion (‘Robots’) to electronica-by-way-of-70s-brassy-soul-samples (‘The Dollar’) to club air-raids for the adult alternative crowd (‘Cake & Eat It Too’). However, the album stealer is ‘All Matter’, which may just be the best single track of the year. Rolling kick drums and a shimmering lead guitar create a damn catchy rock song that gets blown to hell at the hook-heavy chorus when the singer’s unparalleled falsetto hits and serves notice to his peers that the best is back in the game. And like any good comeback, Bilal refuses to dwell on those who scorned him (Interscope), but rather deals with disenfranchisement with the capitalist system and favors analytical looks at relationships that are doomed and the mechanics that lead to incompatibility.
My colleague Brian mentioned The-Dream (fuck yeah, Brian), which I would have had he not placed it in his honorable mentions. Love King is a great record (if ‘All Matter’ is the best track of the year, ‘Make Up Bag’ is number two), but its alternative in the realm of mainstream R&B is Airtight’s Revenge — just as detailed as it relates to production and song construction, but in a way that relies on scouring various sounds and aesthetics beyond the genre; concerning itself less with club bangers and leaning toward being a musician that transcends the confines of one clearly established genre. – Todd Kearns
Tamikrest – Adagh
Tinariwen’s spirited desert blues is on the verge of losing its spirit. After 3 full-lengths of guitars glimmering through the murk, effervescent chants, and imperative zeal, the fire of Mali’s foremost exports is fizzling out for the musical realms they’re generating are as static as the sociopolitical climate spurring them on. Nothing is changing. Fellow Touareg troupe Tamikrest is less concerned with the ambit of the flames on its debut, starting out small, fortifying the roots at the heart of their craft before even pondering the possibility of scaling them. As a result, Adagh is the introverted younger sibling in this family of Malian blues records, groovier, closer to the vest, meditative. The elan and all-out jubilation of Amassakoul is eschewed in favor of a quiet resolve, the guitars ringing and bass undulating, but residing in the trenches instead of jarring them. Roughly translated to English, the outfit’s moniker signifies “junction”, and it practices what it preaches, coming together from Mali, Niger, and Algeria to pen cohesive and concerted desert blues. Adagh is a tale of building ties, bridging gaps, and gaining spiritual sinews from its numbers scattered across one galvanic wave length. Certainly not a contender for the most manifold effort of the year, yet the uniformity only serves to strengthen its cause. There’s a hushed power concealed within every note of these burnished electric guitars, swelling in stature as the album unfolds, ineluctable, reaching out to console as well as consume the souls they encounter on their fated journey to the apogee. Tamikrest’s ravishing voice calls for amity first, action later. – Vinh Cao
Rick Ross – Teflon Don
Where the hell did Rick Ross come from? The last time I checked, he was widely considered a joke who made a name off one inane song. All of a sudden, he had taken the formerly incarcerated Weezy’s spot appearing on every hit, and somehow now he can rap. He’s still not an especially deep rapper, almost every verse a boast about how much he owns or makes or deals, but his rhymes are now irresistible. They’re good enough that they can even rhyme with themselves, like on ‘Free Mason’: “Top back like JFK/They’re tryin’ to push my top back like JFK”. But most importantly, Ross has learned to balance his trademark heavy-handed braggadocio with fun, and because of that Teflon Don has its share of massive hits, specifically ‘Blowin’ Money Fast’ and ‘Aston Martin Music’. Again, neither one is mind-blowing, and the latter features a weird auto-tuned appearance from Drake, but Ross is now capable of matching the banging beat of the former and toning it down just enough for the ultra-smooth ‘Aston Martin’. I never thought I’d describe Rick Ross as versatile, but between the variety here on Teflon Don and his appearances on Kanye’s album, that’s just what he has proven himself to be, worthy now of at least working with the big names if still not quite on their level. – Paul Bulow
Nest – Retold
I don’t chart the trajectory of my footsteps over the course of a day though I suspect that if I did, I’d be awed by how tortuous a road they’ve traveled. From the dazed early-morning shuffle to the demulcent twilit amble to the myriad deviations between these bookends, I’ve left a surfeit of prints in the snow during the past 24 hours alone. When observed through a panorama high above wintry street level, these faint indentations — relics of the city’s exhausting ado — paint a far more cinematic score than that of the quotidian isolated within each pock. Nest’s debut album — comprised of the outfit’s eponymous 2007 EP as well as 5 new songs — Retold taps into this furtive grandeur, workaday at first yet as the measured sounds roam to the very extremities of these lush landscapes, they latch on to one another. They grow and swell into a symphony of the habitual. The smallest strokes, the vaguest movements, they build the spine for this minimalist neo-classical foray as Otto Totland and Huw Roberts submit an ode to the comfort of simply being — of stretching our sea legs and allowing the current’s caprice to steer this wayward vessel. Straying from the ambience-in-a-stuffy-chamber disposition of Totland’s other project Deaf Center, Nest is quite lyrical, its grainy slow-motion dance compelled by the protean inflections of a piano. Retold‘s entries never strike all that powerfully on their own, but when the final notes of ‘Amroth’ eddy into the depths of glacial nothingness, we stop dead in our tracks, peering back into the belly of the abyss, baffled by how far we’ve come. – Vinh Cao