Biggest Disappointments of 2010

The problem with 2010 (besides the numerous non-music related ones) was that everybody who returned to the scene did not dig it with a gangster lean.  In reality it was not that anyone was trying too hard (except for maybe The National), but just fading.

Fading like your favorite pair of jeans that you have always loved because, well, it make your ass look good.  You've loved them, despite the fact they have faded from their nice polished dark wash and slim cut.  But now the holes in the crotch and knees are getting too big to hold back with safety pins, and it might be time to toss them, because unless you're doing homework on a Saturday afternoon, they're really not appropriate for any occasion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the shitty old jeans of 2010:

Belle & Sebastian Belle & Sebastian Write About Love

It seems to appear that Belle & Sebastian need to go into Bruce Springsteen mode and start reissuing their better moments and then do 3-hour live sets.

Eels Tomorrow Morning

Eels are something my blues-rock enthusiast turned me on to when I was slightly dehydrated a little buzzed midday on a Saturday, which is exactly where brilliance like Hombre Lobo belongs.  HOWEVER, what's manipulating Mark Everett's sound is his drive to progress in sounds.  Some people pull it off, but Everett doesn't have enough clout to move out of his progressions to make something that "concludes" a supposed trilogoy like Tomorrow Morning.  


It's like when Conor Oberst came out with Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Everyone hated it because it was too electronic, but everyone loved I'm Wide Awake, it's Morning because it was more confident in itself.  It's like that except the difference would be between this and Lobo.


The Hold Steady Heaven is Whenever

The Hold Steady dropped the baton (which is was thankfully picked up by another few bands), and they dropped it hard.  The wavering undefinability that made them so succesful in the last decade got a little too defined.  It seemed noticable with their last LP in 2008, and it eventually took down another giant.  Listening to it shows that their lyrical content, very shoddily, still exists, often talking about the glories of teenage coitus and the filth that is associated when your head starts bubbling the morning after drinking too hard.  But where it goes south is with their music, which seemed like something that wasn't easy to fuck up, but they apparently did it.  I suspect it has something to do with their organist leaving, but it's pretty inexcusable shit when they essentially created their own genre in the midst of numerous indie bands that came out during the 2000s.

The Magnetic Fields Realism

This album was just shit.  Just pure shit.



The National High Violet

Last winter I got my greasy mitts on a copy of this album and sat in my kitchen with great anticipation that this would be the first move in a long line of excellent deliveries of the vanguard, and I got supremely sad.  Not in the good sad way that The National usually does it (the kind that makes you think whoever has just recently broken your heart come into focus as you smoke a cigarette and ponder why you are as lonely as The National makes you feel oddly stoic).  My problem with this (and just about everybody else in 2010) was that they grew up.  Sometimes growing up is good, but sophomoric is what The National did.  They gave snotty boys with English majors something to subsidize they're lack of emotion.  But what makes this really bad was it took SOOO LOOONNNGGG to return after Boxer only for them to get slightly "completed".


Sleigh Bells Treats

I knew this album was going to suck.  Something this year that everyone seemed to agree on was Noise does not equal Rock.  Sleigh Bells was like Best Coast without the intellect to the lyrics (that was a joke) and replaced with a lot of fucking feedback.

She & Him Volume Two

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel had a really really good thing going for them.  M. Ward knew he was moderately talented and popular, and Deschanel knew she looked good, sounded good, and (I would assume) smelled good.  So you take the two, stick them in a jar, shake for about 40 minutes, and you got Volume One.  It was great!  It was simple catchy pop songs that didn't really go anywhere, and they knew it!  It was so fun!  But I think that the combination has a quick expiration date because by the time they got around to finally recording a second LP, it went sour.  I mean, Volume One was half-assed, but that was the point.  "Theives" was a great track, but that was about it on this album.

-One night a buddy of mine came over and I got caught up in a phone call with my dad.  As I'm laying on my bed in the other room, I could suddenly hear Volume Two being played at a gentle volume (as most She & Him tracks should be played), and I got so angry and distracted I seriously considered taking my shoe off and throwing it at my friend.