Zune Social: As yet another year of our lives slides away, flipping and turning into the trash can of our memories, it's nice to take a fond look at the albums that touched me the most. As late as a decade ago, the concept of buying an album seemed like a waste when the whole disc was assembled to complement the hit radio song on it. Now that I'm older - and awesomer - I realize that musicians may have something going on when they assemble roughly an hour of related songs.
And so now it's time to reflect on the best of the best, so let's get to it! (On a special note, as of writing, all of these albums were available for download via Zune Pass, so snap to it!)
5. Daft Punk - The Score to Tron: Legacy
I've mentioned it before, but most soundtracks - as a slab of stand-alone music - are pretty boring out of the context of the film. This year, however, was a great one for the score-as-an-album. While not entirely Daft Punk's work (they collaborated with Joseph Trapanese for the symphonic sections) the score serves as the thriving life-blood of the film, standing as important as the special effects. Even if the film doesn't strike your fancy (and we would need to have a sit-down chat), the wonderful electro/string soundscapes here are thrilling and immersive.
4. OK Go - Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky
You may know this album for its slick music videos, but this "disc" was making "spins" in my "CD player" in a relentless loop for weeks earlier this year. Pop-y without being stupid, eccentric without being weird, OK Go exudes a palpable sense of fun in all of their formats. Damian Kulash is not only the creative lead here, but also the haunting center instrument of the band: screeching in "Skyscrapers", sleep-singing in "All Is Not Lost", then cracking in "I Want You So Bad I Can't Breathe". Progressive, multi-layered tracks pull you through like a conveyor belt and - oh, boy - is it a great ride.
3. Hans Zimmer - The Score to Inception
If you haven't seen Christopher Nolan's latest film - a dizzying vortex of dreams within dreams - you need to stop reading, run to the local shiny disc dispensary, and thrill yourself for two and a half hours. Not only will you have experienced one of the best films of 2010, but also one of its best music accompaniments. Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento) partners again with Hans Zimmer to bring a pulse-pounding urgency to Inception. While Daft Punk's score was a synthesizer with a symphony, this is a symphony with a synthesizer. Rapid percussion keeps you on the edge of your seat in "Mombasa" before the synths melt away the hooks. This is a dramatic score that's as flash-bang as the movie's gunfire and car chases with a warped sensibility that reminds you that all is not quite right with the rules of these dream worlds.
2. Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns
I cooed about the newest album from early-00s nu metal, perfect-for-teenage-angst band Linkin Park already, but I still have to send up some props. They haven't fully stepped away from the fact that 'things are falling apart' or 'shut up when I'm talking to you' - instead adopting a teetering-on-slapdash 'war sucks' theme - but it's obvious that these guys are getting older and they know where they want to go. This album revives a lot of the fun of listening to their original entry (Hybrid Theory) without a lot of the baggage that we assigned to those tunes when a lot of us were still in school, doing that puberty thing. Linkin Park still knows how to rock it out, but they're far better at channeling it into more constructive works now.
1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
For some reason, I just couldn't get into Arcade Fire's previous discs. Funeral was a little too subdued, Neon Bible was a little too... out there. The Suburbs, on the other hand, sunk its claws into me immediately. The album stands as a hulking monolith: a folksy, campfire denouncement of suburban life, told on the road in some post-apocalyptic nightmare. The lyrics paint a chilling vision of a neighborhood you may live in yourself, while the Montreal-style 'band the size of an army' backing ensures well-covered terrain. From the post-punk rock-out of "Month of May" to the purring synthesizers of "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", from Win Butler's downtrodden exploration of underground cities to Reginee Chassange's (Win's wife) chirpy vocals, the group feels like a collection of stragglers joined in some great journey, devoting the peak of their talents to uncovering this tapestry for us to enjoy. And enjoy we do.
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