musicAddicted

10. Tamaryn - Waves
9. Warpaint - Undertow
8. Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Fight For Me
7. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
6. These New Puritans - We Want War

(Listen to the entire songs and read my descriptions below.
Don’t forget to check ranks 5-1 of top pop songs; top pop albums & top alternative albums of 2010.)

  10. Tamaryn - The Waves

The Waves shows how shoegaze should sound in 2010. Raw, irrepressible, bravely. Tamaryn’s alto is strong and bit rough what makes the washes of guitar echoes even stronger and harsher. In the beginning she sings to “come down to the surface / to the shallows,” but later she rightly orders to “come back to the waves.” And these waves flow directly to the listener and plug all his holes with the strong, unpolished roar of reverberated guitars. Clearly, with no mercy.

   9. Warpaint - Undertow

Undertow starts tenderly and quietly, almost in a romantic manner with words: “Your brown eyes are my blue skies.” Beautiful metaphor that impressively summons all the clichés in pop songs about colours and love; ‘cause being natural is the most cool lifestyle. But then the duo of singers Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman go on in more dramatic and moving way: “What’s the matter? You hurt yourself?” as the song intensifies. And this is just the beginning of something bigger. Warpaint build the mood slowly and patiently to reach the climax with repetitive and overly emotional images of abandoning problems of one-sided selfish love.

   8. Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Fight For Me

On their third album Rivers, Swedish married couple of singer Mariam Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin went highly theatrical and overly expressive what was the best choice they could make. Choir, tribal drums, heavy percussion: all accompany strong, urgent vocals of Mariam, who sings as if she was searching for her last sip of breath. As Fight For Me starts, the military and uneasy mood is obvious from the marching drums and lyrics “The II. World War is here, the first is outside, this one is inside” which are later transformed into brutal “Fight for me, or please just finish me.” This song is life or death, pure ecstasy or never-ending pain. Nothing between, just an extreme statement of the full commitment to the art.

   7. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Canadians Arcade Fire are believable at most, when they reveal their more relaxed and less serious-to-death nature. Sprawl II is the best proof of it. While preceding Sprawl I, sung by tragic-tuned Win Butler, is a melodramatic cry about the fatal change of home and the end of childhood, Sprawl II releases the tense and pain with playful synths, automated drums and ABBA-like kitschy brightness. As Régine Chassagne gets her second solo, she steals the whole show of The Suburbs for herself. Self-confidence and glamorous electroclash remind The Knife, while the key lyrics have no-one to compare with. “Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains, And there’s no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.” With Sprawl II, Arcade Fire found the perfect edge between kitsch and chic, synth-pop and indie rock, fun and excellence.

   6. These New Puritans - We Want War

Hidden belongs to the most expansive albums of 2010 and We Want War is its defining track. Dark, cold, eerie, frightening. Jack Barnett, the head of British quartet, grounded the whole gloom on the uneasiness of brass, instrument very unusual for today’s musical scene. We Want War starts with a nightmarish drum beats and freezing sound of two swords ready for fight. Barnett mumbles as if reciting some occult mantra, while the choir rises in the agony of the inner gloom behind him. We Want War is as much marvelous, as it is grim.