As usual, I wore myself out writing about my favorite songs of last year, and I’m now so late on the albums that I don’t even have time to do full write-ups for each record.

I can’t do the films list until Blue Valentine comes to my city. The Weinstein Company needs to hit me up with some screeners.

That which does not destroy us makes us stronger I guess.

15. Fabolous- There Is No Competition 2: The Funeral Service
14. Titus Andronicus- The Monitor
13. Local Natives- Gorilla Manor
12. Das Racist- Sit Down, Man
11. Arcade Fire- The Suburbs

 
10. Harlem- Hippies- There are times when I think this album was cross-engineered for my consumption: short, rambunctious songs inspired by sixties pop but served up with a knowing, foul-mouthed millenial spirit. Drums, guitars, and yelping: What else do you need?


9. Salem- King Night- Salem will always be remembered as a progenitor of the already splintering micro-genre of witch-house, but their grand, scary sound is more than that label. People never use the word “heavy” to describe music anymore, but this album is just that, humanly aching as much as it is piercingly synthetic. I played King Night on Halloween, and I didn’t get any trick-or-treaters.


8. Free Energy- Stuck on Nothing- There’s an undeniable white denim hangover charm to this band as it unleashes eleven energetic songs that both mimic forgotten corporate rock sensibilities and subtly mock them.


7. Vampire Weekend- Contra- Much like The Strokes did with Room on Fire, Vampire Weekend managed to record an endlessly listenable follow-up that never altered their signature style. They’re still bringing pop colonialism to the North Face set with summery verve. If it ain’t broke, add even more keyboards.


6. How to Dress Well- Love Remains- Tom Krell’s purgatorial R&B outfit How to Dress Well is gloriously lo-fi: It sounds cheaply made, but that’s the best thing it has going for it. As the ghosts in the machine multi-track into oblivion, you can actually hear the fuzzy strains of the software Krell is recording on. This is music that is quite literally bursting at the seams.


5. Tyler, the Creator- Bastard- A lot of virtual ink has been spilled over Tyler’s Odd Future crew as they dangerously boil just below the surface of the mainstream’s radar, like the Sex Pistols to Drake’s Kiss. Tyler acted as if his debut mixtape was the only chance he might get to make a statement, and it certainly sounds that way. The violent, self-flagellating title track, which concludes with, “Fuck a deal, I just want my father’s E-Mail / So I can tell him how much I fucking hate him in detail,” sets the course for an uncompromising, precocious vision.


4. Big K.R.I.T.- K.R.I.T. Wuz Here- While Big K.R.I.T.’s booming, drawling voice is as powerful as anyone else’s, the real star here is his mellifluous production, jammed with withered, lugubrious soul samples and soft crack snares. With its sampled snatches of film dialogue and ambitious tone, K.R.I.T. Wuz Here recalls the Second Golden Age of Hip-Hop with reverence, and every song sounds as if this was the only guy who could have done it justice.


3. LCD Soundsystem- This Is Happening- James Murphy’s third proper album of slow-build, adroit, atmospheric late night confessions is similar to what he’s been delivering. However, whereas the eponymous debut was a yearning call looking for a group response, and Sound of Silver was a more insular, wounded record, this one unites the public and the private to create an even more profound statement. The cheekiness is still here with lines such as, “Acting like a jerk / Except you are an actual jerk.” But this is an older, more sentimental album in the best possible uses of those words.


2. Yeasayer- Odd Blood- For Odd Blood, Yeasayer took all of the momentum and experimentation of their assured debut, and they added stadium-ready melodies, creating a more accessible, soaring, art-rock version of themselves. When the best singer in your group is not actually the lead singer, you have talent to spare. While the album isn’t perfect—the first song is downright terrible—its highs are exhilarating, expressive, and daring. It doesn’t have as much of a unified spirit as All Hour Cymbals, which I think is why it was underrated upon release, but Odd Blood has an elegant craftsmanship to every song, and it still shines brightly months later.


1. Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-

No matter how you want to analyze Kanye West’s monumental fifth full-length, it reveals more of itself with each listen.

You want to look at it from the angle of its crowd-sourcing innovation? In leaking most of these tracks piecemeal, West was able to shape them into a meticulous, ever-evolving final draft. For example, when he premiered the plaintive, regret-tinged “Runaway” at the VMAs, he punctuated it with EPMD-esque sample stabs. The mp3 he released the next day didn’t have these live flourishes and, when downloaders complained, he made sure to include them on the final version. At the same time, he expanded songs like “Devil in a New Dress” and subbed a hungry roster of guests however they best served the final product. Imagine if you told the average listener that half of a new, highly-anticipated album would be spoiled for them months in advance, and they had no choice but to look at it as a positive.

If you want to look at it from the standpoint of Kanye’s development, then trace the albums by the through-lines of Jay-Z. His verse on The College Dropout’s “Never Let Me Down,” full of religious imagery and an unexpected second verse, sounds like a blessing from a king to a prince: He takes over for an inferior. One album later, on the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix),” he consciously out-does Kanye while taking the last word on their perceived beef, still steering the moral high ground with paternal agency. Jay doesn’t have a verse on Graduation, but his presence hangs like a specter, a disembodied sample here, a song dedicated to his memory there. After sitting out 808s and Heartbreak, respecting the personal statement of his protege, he shows up on MBDTF as exactly what he now is: a guest, still wanted but no longer needed. And I don’t feel as if I’m digging deep for these connections at all. This is just what happens when you have a rich catalog of songs to draw from.

You want to look at it from a purely musical standpoint? Most of this is overstuffed maximalism, dripping with contentious ambition and graceful beauty. However, even when songs don’t work, like the dizzy “Hell of a Life,” they make complete sense within the context of this sequencing. From anyone else, a song about marrying a porn star would be non sequitur after “Runaway,” but here it fits into this sumptuous mythology of Black music that he has been going to great lengths to create. Conflating sex, drugs, violence, and religion is the same bargain that Robert Johnson struck at the Mississippi crossroads, and West is conscious of that bigger story that he’s writing chapters for.

With most of these songs dragging over five minutes, is this an indulgent album? Absolutely. Is it self-obsessed? Sure. But that’s part of the point. West has seized greatness, topped himself, and he had to do it through sheer force of will.