Mid-Year Lists 2010

[koganbot]

Mid-Year Lists 2010

Singles First Half 2010: "Blah Blah Blah" is the big hairy dance-mess that's dancing over the world, while Aggro and Dizzee are the only other representatives here of 2010's dance-pop mess. Not enough country on this list, and at this time of year that's usually my fault, but this time I think it's country's. (Probably not

Comments

[skyecaptain]

Ha, I say the same thing about Allison Moorer! I've been listening to what seems like a new album every year for three years or so, mostly upon Matt C.'s recommendation, but she's never clicked. (Laura Marling is one who's like that for me this year, along with...y'know, Allison Moorer.)

Kelis is warm in spite of herself -- I said at the Jukebox that her love comes in at right angles to the ersatz backing, though I think "ersatz" is more negative than I mean it to be. But there's a certain disjuncture there that sometimes produces interesting results and sometimes just kind of detaches itself from the sentiment. For me the key track is "Song for the Baby," which (for me) colors the rest of the album retroactively, a personal narrative that's not as schmaltzy as it appears at first and really does bathe in warmth in the way that the rest of the album keeps somewhere between arm's length and on another planet entirely.

If you haven't yet, you might want to give the new A-Trak "Dirty South Dance" mix a listen -- I'm starting to appreciate it (not necessarily "like" it) more than the original for the way it does some incredible salvage work on mediocre tracks. It's a stunning "before and after" process even if the results don't hit the highs of his first mix.

Glad to see you're liking the Marina album. It's really special, even though I seem to want to smack Marina upside the head pretty consistently.

My sense from your history with Kylie is that you won't particularly like this one -- it's a modest extension of stuff she's done before. See also: the new Dream album, which is so disjointed that I listen to it primarily as a rarities comp at this point.