My Year in Lists. 20 favourite albums of 2010

Here's a wee list of my 20 favourite full-length albums released over the course of 2010. You may notice there aren't any South African albums on this list; for the list of my favourite local releases head here. The order of albums included in that lists was totally random, but in the case of this list I tried to order them from my least to my most favourite of the favourites.

20.
Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History
19.
We Have Band - WHB
18.
Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock
17.
Errors - Come Down with me
16.
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
15.
Tubelord - Tezcatlipocat & For the Grandparents
(two half albums make a whole one right?)
14.
Tanlines - Volume On
13.
Broken Bells - ST
12.
Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
11.
Best Coast - Crazy for you
10.
Dangerous Ponies - ST
9.
Fang Island - ST
8.
LCD Soundsystem - This Happening
7.
Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
6.
Los Campesinos - Romance is Boring
5.
Everyone Everywhere - ST
4.
So So Modern - Crude Futures
3.
Tera Melos - Patagonian Rats
2.
Les Savy Fav - Root for Ruin
1.
Tokyo Police Club - Champ

So there you have it! 2010 held some disappointments (Ratatat I'm looking at you. Thanks for breaking my heart you dicks). I'm sure there are albums I will adore but have missed, but I did find a bunch of things I loved. From the almost irritating niceness of Two Door Cinema Club to the absurdly ambitious genre-melting sci-fi wonder of Janelle Monae, there was a lot for me to like this year. But it's the albums in the top 5 that I was most obsessed with.

The surprise joy of Junior filling me in on Everyone Everywhere, a band who sound like they're sitting in Philly recording songs just for him in Birmingham and me in Jozi. The shock of discovering So So Modern somehow metamorphosised into a post-rock art-punk mammoth; realizing the synth-driven promise that always got me excited about Errors and merging it with a freak-fuck-out exuberance to match Fugazi. The pleasure of seeing Tera Melos going post post-rock; (like favourites Trail of Dead and Blood Brothers did before them) coming from abrasive beginings, bravely adding a bucket-load of pop-sense to the mix and ending up a far better band because of it. The satisfaction of seeing Les Savy Fav doing what they've always done best. And finally the total euphoria I felt every single time I listened to Champ; hearing Tokyo Police Club living up to the great promise of their debut EP, releasing an album that's as catchy, emotive and sincere as anything I heard all year.

These last five albums become friends I'd hang out with every day, engravings that'll always be etched in my mind when I think of 2010 and treasures I'll happily carry with me into the future.

Free Mix Friday! The Adventures of Fuzzy Wuzzy and Sloppy Poppy!

So after writing about Us Kids Knows forthcoming "Problems" like a billion times, this is the last time I'll be doing a post relating to the tape before it launches this evening. From next week you can expect to see some excited words and snappy photos of us playing on jungle gyms and jumping in the air with lucky packets, but for now the launch is still something we're looking forward to.

You may remember that, for the soundtrack of the launch party, Us Kids Know asked a bunch of their friends to make mixtapes? Well without further ado, I'm happy to share mine with you now, "The Adventures of Fuzzy Wuzzy and Sloppy Poppy"!

DOWNLOAD "THE ADVENTURES OF FUZZY WUZZY AND SLOPPY POPPY" HERE!

Ben's non-SA acts of the decade 2000 - 2009

Since last year I've been working on a list of my favorite albums from this past decade. Trying to decide which TV on the Radio album is better than the next was just becoming a headache, so instead I've decided to just make a list of my top acts of the decade.

Even arranging this list was kinda silly. Can I really say I loved Beulah more than Belle and Sebastian? Not really but i did anyway.

The positioning of the acts is pretty much based around quantity x quality. Life Without Buildings beat the crap out of everything because although they only had a quantity of 1 album, the quality is so absurdly awesome it beats even the massive quantity of high quality that Liars churned out over the course of the decade.

50. Islands
49. Cut Copy
48. Explosions in the Sky
47. Modest Mouse
46. Do Make Say Think
45. Super Furry Animals
44. Moving Units
43. Broadcast
42. Yo La Tengo
41. The Evens
40. Pinback
39. Camera Obscura
38. Grandaddy
37. Black Eyes
36. Mae Shi
35. El Guapo/ Supersystem
34. Broken Social Scene
33. !!!
32. The Shins
31. Caribou/ Manitoba
30. M83
29. LCD Soundsystem
28. Toe
27. Le Tigre
26. The Raveonettes
25. Belle and Sebastian
24. So Many Dynamos
23. Enon
22. Beulah
21. The Rapture
20. The Sea and Cake
19. The Go! Team
18. TV on the Radio
17. Why?
16. I Heart Hiroshima
15. Phoenix
14. Blood Brothers
13. Liars
12. The Unicorns
11. Saturday looks Good to Me
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9. Les Savy Fav
8. Sleater Kinney
7. Thunderbirds are Now!
6. Ratatat
5. Johnny Foreigner
4. Q and not U
3. The Dismemberment Plan
2. Life Without Buildings
1. And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead