MusicOlogy presents… The Top 50 Albums In Ology History: our look back at the best albums, mixtapes and EPs of the past three years.
Since January 2009, our crack team of smarter than the average bear music editors has scoured every last corner of the internet to bring you… the frustratingly smart and dazzlingly attractive readers of Ology.com… the absolute best new music in the world. From leaks to street dates, reviews to Rewinds, we've brought you all the latest in pop, hip-hop, indie/alternative rock and more with wit, know-how and, most of all, enough tasteless sarcasm to last two or three more lifetimes.
| Related: The 10 Best Indie/Alternative Albums Of 2012 (Halfway Edition) |
Three and half years and a billion cups of coffee later, we presented ourselves with a seemingly simple challenge: compile the definitive list of the 50 greatest music releases in the history of our (we think) pretty awesome web destination. What did that entail, exactly? So glad you asked. Since April, music editors Brett Warner and JT Langley have been digging through three years worth of music, checking out your suggestions, staying up sleepless nights and eventually debating, deciding and arm-wrestling the pool down to a final 50.
We'll be rolling out the entire list every Monday all this month here at MusicOlogy, so keep checking back to see if your favorite records made the cut.
Maestro, if you please...
LCD Soundsystem
This Is Happening (2010)
"You wanted a hit / Well, this is how we do hits…" DFA co-founder James Murphy brought his retro wink-nudge dance-punk project to a resounding close with This Is Happening, one of the most joyously down in the dumps dance record ever recorded. From the hold-release tension of "Dance Yrself Clean" to the euphoric funk of "Home," Murphy aired his various boredoms, frustrations, pipe dreams and neurotic fears over extended, New York City at 3 a.m. jams that out-grooved (and outdid) everything on the first two LCD records. From the first kick drum through the last snare, This Is Happening is both a resounding swan song and one of the most essential pre-hangover listens of the last decade.
Our Favorites: "Dance Yrself Clean," "All I Want" and "You Wanted A Hit."
REKS
Rhythmatic Eternal King Supreme (2011)
Straight, No Chaser (2012)
REKS still holds down one of the more interesting stories in terms of fading from early fame, and following up his In Between the Lines mixtapes, R.E.K.S. (Rhythmatic Eternal King Supreme) and Straight, No Chaser showed us the Massachusetts machine-gun rhymer was moving at a freight train pace that’s marking down some of the best music of his career, and doing so without weight from the industry hindering his potential. Whereas R.E.K.S. was a reintroduction via booting down the industry's door with a bullet-paced salvo of unrivaled lyrical heaters and relentless statements toward everything of hip-hop inconveniencing his effort to rise and maintain, Straight, No Chaser let the fire lie, still riding the same kinesthicity, though delving more into introspection and an outward commentary to lay out everything of REKS' talent that had been moved to the peripherals. The pair of albums is exemplary of the reintroduction-to-reestablishment story, and show an emcee walk the walk that most of the game only sits fat on the mid-ladder chatting about.
Our Favorites: "The 25th Hour,"Cigarettes" and "This Or That" (Rhythmatic Eternal King Supreme)… "Power Lines,"Lost In Translation" and "Riggs &Murtaugh" (Straight, No Chaser).
Broken Bells
Broken Bells (2010)
Two of our generation's most momentous sonic architects… The Shins frontman James Mercer and producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton… joined forces with fabulous results on Broken Bells, an album that married the former's penchant for endearing bedroom pop melodies with the latter's lush, joyously inventive arrangements. Arriving with a breezy swirl of acoustic guitars and analogue synths at their backs, Broken Bells proved to be that rare side project greater than the sum of its parts; the album showcased the aesthetic strengths of both artists while pushing each into exciting new musical territory.
Our Favorites: "The High Road," "The Ghost Inside" and "Trap Doors."
Danny Brown
XXX (2011)
The Hybrid (2010)
Pieces of Danny Brown have remained mostly in an under-the-radar phylum due to his oddity, especially coming from the Detroit rough, but XXX managed to top many "most overlooked mixtapes" lists last year following the buzz he set down in 2010 with The Hybrid, probably because hip-hop heads finally found a guy strange enough and willing to spend half his time spitting about twat jokes and snorting Adderall kiddingly, though doing it in a manner that serves some of the most outlandish brilliance to come by, and in some eccentric manner that marks it as "cool." Show me another emcee that can stun both the Pitchfork crowd and horde of hip-hop diehards on the other end, and I'll consider the idea that Danny isn’t the equivalent to rap music’s cartoon mad scientist.
Our Favorites: "Bruiser Brigade,"Die Like a Rockstar" and "Pac Blood" (XXX)… "Re-Up,"Nowhere 2 Go" and "White Stripes" (The Hybrid).
Moby
Wait For Me (2009)
Destroyed (2011)
A decade after the surprise success of Play pushed him to the forefront of America's first electronic music renaissance, punk rocker turned vegan ambient auteur Moby reached another creative peak with two brilliant, stylistically disparate new albums. A bold retreat from the heavy club nostalgia of Last Night, Wait For Me burrowed his penchant for cinematic melancholy beneath slower, pensive, gloriously sad songs peppered with twinkling guitars and somber keyboards. Destroyed, meanwhile, took its aesthetic cues from empty city streets and abandoned hallways, stripping Moby's sound down to its barest, most captivating emotional elements.
Our Favorites: "Pale Horses," "Mistake" and "Hope Is Gone" (Wait For Me)… "Be The One," "Lie Down In Darkness" and "The Violent Bear It Away" (Destroyed).
Nas and Damian Marley
Distant Relatives (2010)
Monumental isn't a word we toss around easily, but in the circumstance of Distant Relatives, Nas and Damian Marley managed to earn the term on the basis of everything the album stands for. Aside from being an exceptional effort of bridging the worlds of hip-hop and reggae, which have plenty of kin, the marriage of genealogical links back to the African continent surpassed the often-used idea of Afrocentrism that has been thrown around loosely in hip-hop without much charge behind it. Everything of Distant Relatives is a call to unity, both contextually and musically, and the example set by two of music’s greats exhibits a humble mentality expressing the idea that there is no true racial or social nobility, that these are simply things created by man, and at the root of human to human relationship on a strictly evolutionary plain, equality is the means for progress. The album is anthemic in many ways, but the depth of knowledge conveyed throughout the music and myriad of stylistic touches is one of the rare instances where artists are truly working through example rather than words.
Our Favorites: "Patience,"Strong Will Continue" and "Africa Must Wake Up."
Shabazz Palaces
Black Up (2011)
Theoretical artistic anarchy and hip-hop haven't always birthed the best projects, but Shabazz Palaces managed to build off their previous EPs with their droning trip-hop style to Black Up to give us something eerily fresh, and far past the red line on the gauge of normalcy (as well as some of the most unnecessarily long song titles, as you’ll see below). While disorder reigns from song to song, the reason in Black Up comes from the mid-track turns and unpredictability that give it an operatic feel without much demarcation in terms of tracklist. The glitching trance breaks, cerebral effect layers and psychotropic poetry make make about as close to a hallucinogenic experience as you'll find, and the beauty of it all is that the attention to detail called for makes it truly an album you can get lost in.
Our Favorites: "An Echo from the Hosts That Profess Infinitum,"Are youE Can youE ere You? (Felt)" and "Endeavors For Never (the last time we spoke you said you were not here. I saw you though.)"
†††
EP † (2011)
EP †† (2012)
Sacramento childhood friends Chino Moreno (Deftones, Team Sleep) and Shaun Lopez (Far, The Revolution Smile) came out of nowhere late last year with ††† (pronounced "Crosses"), an experimental new side project that married both artists' love of early post-punk, '80s goth rock and ambient electronics with their respective post-hardcore backgrounds. Released exclusively online, the group's two EPs spring-boarded off the Deftones' more adventurous side, boasting a thick, raw, ominous and evocative sound unlike anything else out there today, from the first keyboard hiss of "This Is A Trick" through the deafening collapse of "1987."
Our Favorites: "Option," "Thholyghst," and "Bermuda Locket" (EP †) … "Frontiers," "Telepathy" and "Trophy" (EP ††).
Lupe Fiasco
Enemy Of The State: A Love Story (2009)
Sure, the beats on this one might not belong to Lu, but while we were waiting to get some minutia of truth about a new album, Enemy of the State was the fix we needed to remind us that Lupe Fiasco was still one of the premier emcees in the game. While most artists usually use and abuse popular beats with half-effort remixes and piss-poor adoptions, Lupe made it blatant that he was working on other artists’ turf, and, despite the success of their instrumentals, laid out the fact that he could take your favorite rapper’s hits and do it better in what seems an effortless fashion. Enemy of the State might be listed a mixtape across the Internet venues, but if you know it through well, then you can agree that in most instances, there’s little to say from a sonic standpoint that any slice of real estate on the album doesn’t belong to Lu.
Our Favorites: "Fireman,"Thank You" and "Angels."
The Shins
Port Of Morrow (2012)
After an insufferable five-year wait, James Mercer returned with an almost entirely revamped version of The Shins and a new studio album to boot. Equal parts stripped-down acoustic rock a la Chutes Too Narrow and lush, billowing Brian Wilson-style psychedelic pop, Port Of Morrow found the indie statesman tackling life, love, domesticity and his own restless wanderlust with shimmering arrangements, imaginative lyrics and (of course) inescapably feel-good melodies. Ignore the cute epileptic girl with the helmet—this is the Shins record that will change your life.
Our Favorites: "The Rifle's Spiral," "Bait And Switch" and "40 Mark Strasse."
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Don't forget to leave your responses/reactions in the comments section below and be sure to check back next Monday (July 9), when we'll be unveiling Nos. 40-31 in our list of The Top 50 Albums in Ology History. See you all then.
Nos. 50-41 | Nos. 40-31 | Nos. 30-21 | Nos. 20-11 | The Top 10
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