LNWF’s Best Of 2010: Brianne
Posted on December 23rd, 2010 by Brianne
Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (4HD)
Before getting hold of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, I was afraid it was going be just another addition to the “Disposable Records of the Year” list (you know, those records you like for about a two week span, but quickly forget about as the calendar pages turn and other releases take their place). I have always been a fan of Bradford Cox and his many musical endeavors — and God, was I glad my apprehensions were quickly proven wrong. You could say I fell in love with the fluidity woven within the record’s prose; weaving between a soothing sound of self-destruction on tracks like “Earthquake,” to an elevated dreamy pleasure found on songs like “Fountain Stairs.” Really, it is the nonpareil subtleties of this record — like when Bradford’s voice reaches that crescendoing wail about two and a half minutes into “Helicopter” — that really makes Halcyon Digest my number one choice for 2010.
Deerhunter “Helicopter”
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Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (XL)
The Monitor hit a particular chord for me in 2010. From start to finish, the album serves as a reminder of the naive days when we all felt invincible — looking for answers to questions we didn’t have and embracing friendships formed over long, liquor-quenched nights. Within the first minutes of listening to the album’s opening track, “A More Perfect Union,” Titus Andronicus sets the stage of sitting in the driver’s seat, as the windows are down, the volume is up and your friends are in the backseat drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes. The brisk freeway winds are swallowing drags of cigarette smoke as you race the beat of dawn, but you never quite manage to do so, and by the end of the record its all gone. It is probably my affinity towards North Jersey that draws me closer to Titus Andronicus with each release, but as a full-length follow up to 2008′s The Airing of Grievances, I could not ask for more from this album. It is a look back on honesty and youth at its finest; reminding us we were not always as jaded as age may have made us, as we sit alone listening to records in a dusty Greenpoint lofts.
Titus Andronicus “A More Perfect Union”
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