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Per­son­ally, 2010 has been an exceed­ingly kind year, not easy, but filled with joy and grat­i­tude and hope. Regard­ing music, though, it’s been kind of a drag. There have been some great albums and unfor­get­table songs, but there have been lots of dis­ap­point­ments, too, and noth­ing that would’ve been among my top three albums of 2009. Of course, 2009 was an out­stand­ing year — in my opin­ion, the best in 40 years — which makes 2010 seem that much more of a dud, I guess.

Just the same, there’s no such thing as a “bad year” in music, as far as I’m con­cerned, and there have been some good albums in 2010. In fact, I’d label the top four of this list “excel­lent,” the sec­ond three “great,” and the rest “good” (fyi, that’s a sig­nif­i­cant drop-off, as “very good” should fit in between there). And there are a few nota­bles miss­ing from this list. They have been omit­ted with cau­tion and dis­cre­tion. There’s no shame in being num­ber 11, y’all, even in 2010!

So here it is, the list, each album with a song to sam­ple and a sen­tence about why I like it. Feed­back is wel­come, but please keep in mind my out­look on list mak­ing.

10. Twin Shadow — Forget

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A promis­ing debut with a few incred­i­ble moments, includ­ing “Cas­tles in the Snow” (above).

9. Harlem — Hippies

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Harlem is becom­ing a favorite of mine after their 2008 debut, Free Drugs;) and now Hip­pies, both of which strike a bal­ance between dirty garage rock and irre­sistible bub­blegum pop.

8. Damien Jurado — Saint Bartlett

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Mr. Jurado adds to his usu­ally stripped-down sound and breathes life into his always excel­lent compositions.

7. Deer­hunter — Hal­cyon Digest

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I feel like Brad­ford Cox, et al., are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter with each release, and they were pretty good from the start.

6. Tame Impala — InnerSpeaker

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One of the sur­prises of the year, Inner­S­peaker doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily break new ground (see: Dun­gen; also: the 1970s), but it treads old ground magnificently.

5. Erykah Badu — New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

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Ms. Badu is known for being a tri­fle self-indulgent, but, here, she is an unex­pected exem­plar of restraint: she has her indul­gences by the reins.

4. Joanna New­som — Have One On Me

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Prob­a­bly the best triple-album of all time, Have One On Me is full of small moments of per­fec­tion.
See my post from 12/8/10.

3. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graf­fiti — Before Today

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As famil­iar as strange can get; as strange as famil­iar can get.
See my post from 12/7/10.

2. Fly­ing Lotus — Cosmogramma

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This album cap­ti­vates my imag­i­na­tion in ways usu­ally reserved for good books and really good movies.
See my post from 12/6/10.

1. Beach House — Teen Dream

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Teen Dream is strik­ing in its sense of sub­tlety and its plain beauty.
See my post from 12/3/10.