Photo by Erez Avissar

20. Oneohtrix Point Never

Returnal

[Editions Mego]

Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego label enjoyed some halcyon days in 2010, with releases by Emeralds, Mark Fell, and Brooklyn bedroom composer Daniel Lopatin. The vaporous, mostly beat-less electronic sound favored by Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never previously sprawled out in abundance over his 2009 compilation, Rifts. But Returnal marked a paring down of the OPN sound into easier-to-digest segments, while still retaining Lopatin's fondness for creating a soundworld shaped by barely-formed husks of noise, where icy electronic fragments curl up into the atmosphere like a bank of fog rolling into view.

This isn't music without precedent-- Lopatin owes a debt to Robert Fripp's 'Frippertronics' experiments, in particular his 1981 record Let the Power Fall, from which the core OPN sound is mined. This is demonstrated on tracks like "Describing Bodies" and "Stress Waves", where the distinct lack of bass plunges the ambiance into sub-zero chills, and wisps of rudderless synth drones are cast adrift and left to coil into infinity. But this isn't simply an exercise in machine noise set in motion-- there's a sense of human pathos burrowed deep in the placid heart of this music. Returnal also finds Lopatin stretching the OPN framework via the combustible noise of "Nil Admirari" (a Latin phrase that translates as "to marvel at nothing") and the vocal-driven title track. His delicate reworking of the latter with Antony, combined with his warped take on 1980s pop fetishization in his side project Games, sets an impressively high benchmark for whatever comes next. --Nick Neyland

Photo by Erez Avissar

19. How to Dress Well

Love Remains

[Lefse / Tri Angle]

Over the past two years there's been a proliferation of nostalgic music obscured by its own sound, of songs that sound like they died 20 years ago and have been decomposing ever since. But the engine of nostalgia is loss, which is one of the reasons How to Dress Well stood out so prominently: Of course the best format for this brokedown and distant style was a lone choirboy's sexless recitation of 20-year-old R&B ballads, the kind of songs we listen to when we're experiencing loss, or at least want to be reminded of someone else's. In an early interview, How to Dress Well's Tom Krell said that when he was recording "Ready For the World", he imagined how a child would feel hearing someone through the floor, crying over the sound of the radio after having been dumped: an image of loss and distance, but also of uncanny presence.

Most of Krell's lyrics are unintelligible, but the intended emotional message of the music-- feel it or not-- is consistent. And while the production depends on lo-fi's opacity, it never covers up his quivering falsetto, a show of confidence a lot of young lo-fi musicians can't or don't make. The album's strangest trick might be how representative it is of a now-common aesthetic while still sounding so exceptional in light of its peers. --Mike Powell

Photo by Kathryn Yu

18. Erykah Badu

New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

[Universal Motown]

In Erykah Badu's New Amerykah diptych, political unrest and emotional solvency have been disseminated equally. One for the revolutionaries (that's Part One) and this one, for the lovers. The peanut butter and chocolate occasionally melt together, but mostly this is a divided series. "I need your attention," Badu whinnies on "Window Seat", a song whose video used nakedness-- she literally sheds her clothes-- as a political tool promoting unencumbered openness. Great video, muddled concept. But as with all of Badu's untrained, unstrained music, it works far better as an expression of feeling over foment. Where the first installment rattled the same bones as Funkadelic and Sly Stone, Ankh finds Badu channeling softer, warmer sounds. The elegant astral stylings of Syreeta Wright, in particular, seem a clear inspiration, while timeless hip-hop source material-- songs from Eddie Kendricks and Sylvia Striplin and phrasings made famous by Biggie-- is re-contextualized here. Badu is playful throughout, at one point posing as a gangster's side chick seeking recompense, but by the time we arrive at the 10-minute closer, "Out My Mind, Just in Time", she is officially turning herself over to the one. "I pray for you, crochet for you, make it from scratch for you," she sings on the song. It's hard to tell whom she's talking to, but it's always you. --Sean Fennessey

Photo by Charles Taylor Bergquist

17. Caribou

Swim

[Merge]

Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, called Swim his attempt to make "liquid dance music," and it's possible that there is no more evocative summation of his album's sound as that. It is the most propulsive record of his career, full of 4/4 pulses and strafing keys, and yet it is too diffuse for dancing-- every sound seems to simultaneously roll toward you and gracefully recede, washing from left to right or dipping below a muffled filter. It makes for a gorgeously tactile listening experience; the drums hit with a soapy slap, burbles and sucking sounds eddying in all corners of the viscous mix. It is a record you immerse in, a record that surrounds you, and Snaith's high, frail singing-- about acrimonious dead-end relationships, about mortal struggles with drug addiction-- is almost alarmingly intimate. It might not reliably pack dancefloors on this planet, but if there is a club somewhere in the galaxy where the blue squid lady from The Fifth Element is a regular, my guess is that Swim never stops playing. --Jayson Greene

Photo by Erez Avissar

16. Sleigh Bells

Treats

[N.E.E.T. / Mom & Pop]

Like much of the best pop, Sleigh Bells sound thoroughly calculated-- their collision of aesthetics and poses is so striking it risks feeling phony. Initially, even the positive criticism was hedged. The mix of blown-out noise and bubblegum hookwork seemed gimmicky: People assumed they'd see through it by the end of summer. But what the band are so carefully sculpting isn't diffidence, it's excitement: overdriven riffs, monster beats, and Alexis Krauss' layered babble all designed for chain-reaction impact. The band lay out their shtick in the first 30 seconds of "Tell 'Em"-- machine-gun beatbox, imperious riffing, and sing-song prettiness from Krauss. Elsewhere on Treats you can hear fragments of pop's past-- Lush on "Rachel", the Shangri-Las on "Kids"-- but mainly Sleigh Bells stick to their own, new-minted sound, and it helps the thrills stay fresh.

The most convincing take on Treats-- the one which makes emotional sense to me-- is that it's a kind of teenpop: the mess, posturing, chaos, and unrelenting immediacy of an adolescent's headspace crushed into two-minute blurts. But the record doesn't really need decoding. Either you grin when "Crown on the Ground" unleashes those cartoonish speaker-busting beats or you don't. There's a videogame delight here in explosions and effects for their own sake, an irrepressible joy that's Sleigh Bells' biggest asset and the foundation of this record's surprising endurance. --Tom Ewing

Photo by Eirik Lande

15. Robyn

Body Talk

[Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope]

Anyone who's had the good fortune to see Robyn wreck a stage knows that the Europop eminence is a star right down to her bone marrow. But the Body Talk series was still a titanic act of hubris-- three pure-gold mini-albums in one calendar year, from someone who hadn't released a new LP in a half-decade. And in the end, we got this instant greatest-hits album: The best songs from each installment in one place, peak after peak after peak for 15 tracks. Everyone has some quibble with the tracklist ("None of Dem" over "Include Me Out"? Really?), but hearing all these songs in one place is just an exclamation point at the end of an amazing pop year.

Musically, Body Talk is single-minded in its pursuit of dancefloor frenzy . Synths ripple, drums pound, massive choruses explode outward at the exact right moment. Robyn knows better than anyone else how to make efficient house-pop bangers like these; these tracks' moving parts work together in mechanistic harmony. But at its most transcendent, Body Talk also tells stories like a great country record. There's the spurned girl finding comfort in the beat ("Dancing on My Own"), the other woman calmly telling you how to move on ("Call Your Girlfriend"), the fuck-buddy pulling you close with one hand and pushing you away with the other ("Hang With Me"). And even in the lesser moments, there's plenty to love: The gleefully goofy Snoop Dogg collab, the furious frustration-dump, the line about dancing "to the beat of bad kissers clicking teeth." Robyn has pulled off her grand, ridiculous idea. Standing ovation. --Tom Breihan

Photo by Kathryn Yu

14. Flying Lotus

Cosmogramma

[Warp]

"Wonder if i have any chance in hell getting a Grammy nomination this week. If I ever had a shot, this is the year." That was what Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, tweeted on November 29; two days later, the nominations were announced, and Ellison's Cosmogramma was nowhere to be found. FlyLo subsequently went off, and while the Grammys don't really matter, it's understandable that he was upset. Cosmogramma is an event record, a knowingly audacious "album's album" that plays like a love letter to the most adventurous, forward-thinking music released on Warp. Its epic scope and fully realized nature invokes some of the classic LPs under the long-running label's umbrella: Music Has the Right to Children, Music Is Rotted One Note, Richard D. James Album, One Word Extinguisher. Cosmogramma represents ambition for ambition's sake, exceeding its own lofty goals on every level.

In 2010, the ease of home recording meant that everyone was a "producer," but it's still just as difficult to "produce" decent music. The first half of the year found many upstarts trying (and failing) to replicate the woozy post-Dilla amniotic haze of FlyLo's 2008 breakout, Los Angeles; after Cosmogramma came out in May, imitators were stopped dead, left wondering how it was possible to fuse drum'n'bass, four-on-the-floor house, downtempo, jazz, and a dozen other genre tics while still rising well above pastiche. Ironically, some of the releases that came out on his label Brainfeeder this year seemed like a peek behind the curtain of Cosmogramma's individual components: Lorn's martial, chaotic constructions, Teebs' honey-flowing pastoral preoccupations, Daedelus' warm Tropicália touches. All these reference points, and yet Cosmogramma still sounds like a work of art that is wholly individual and unique. Fuck a Grammy: now that's reason to celebrate. --Larry Fitzmaurice

Photo by Eirik Lande

13. No Age

Everything in Between

[Sub Pop]

Compared to its two full-length predecessors, the proper LP Nouns and the singles and EP collection Weirdo Rippers, Everything in Between took a few more listens to sink in. The new album was less frantic and less experimental, leaving behind a certain amount of punk bite and shoegaze dreaminess. It didn't wash over you or grab you by the throat; on this album, the songs were what counted. So as No Age's aesthetic drifted toward a sound that can best be described as classic indie rock in the late 1980s/early 90s mode, the group brought along the shifts in mood and subtly affecting tunes that made the best from that era so beloved. No Age had never sounded this vulnerable but also never this confident, like they had finally settled into an approach that suited them best and now they were capable of taking the songs wherever they needed to go. So you had the youthful rush of "Fever Dreaming" alongside the wounded and downcast "Common Heat" next to the trashy brattiness of "Sorts", and it all hung together like one thing. Everything in Between found No Age not so much growing up as growing outward, finding new possibilities in directness and simplicity. --Mark Richardson

Photo by Kathryn Yu

12. Janelle Monáe

The ArchAndroid

[Bad Boy / Wondaland Arts Society]

Philip K. Dick boogies like James Brown in Janelle Monáe's future, so how could it possibly be a dystopia? Her hugely ambitious full-length debut-- more Sign 'O' the Times than Kid A-- continues the ongoing story of android-human romance that she began on her 2007 EP Metropolis: Suite I: The Chase, set in a world that resembles a funkier Brazil crisscrossed with action sequences and love themes. Divided into suites bookended by orchestral overtures, the whole thing could easily curdle into concept-album hokum, but Monáe nods to the metaphorical potential of the sci-fi underpinnings (android/Other/African-American) without overplaying them. She understates her ideas and trusts her listeners to get them. --Stephen M. Deusner

Photo by Eric Kayne

11. Arcade Fire

The Suburbs

[Merge]

That Spike Jonze seized upon 2004's exuberantly one-dimensional "Wake Up" as the ideal wrapper for the ragged, pre-adolescent confusion of Where the Wild Things Are might easily have felt like a backhanded compliment to a songwriter of Win Butler's aspiration. By connecting Arcade Fire with the film, Jonze foregrounded the band's own formative period; by connecting the dumbstruck incomprehension that comes with childhood to their 40-story bluster, he inadvertently critiqued it. Six years later, they're a different band, and The Suburbs marks the culmination of that change. Where once stood a group of marching and occasionally baying idealists now stands something more considered, more complicated, and, well, more conflicted.

On paper, a concept record about something as banal as the suburbs sounds prone to terrible cliché. Fortunately, Butler spares us any neat and tidy disapproval of two-car garages and manicured lawns in favor of something considerably more measured and conflicted-- a full-bodied account of all the sweetness and strangeness of that life in all its multitudes. He aches just as much as he spits, reminisces just as much as he resolves, and veers between sounding like a revolutionary ("Ready to Start") and an old man ("We Used to Wait"), in turn painting a surprisingly nuanced picture of thirtysomething inertia. The Suburbs isn't so much about feeling old as it is about not always feeling young, and "that feeling" is bittersweet and complex. --Mark Pytlik