The best music of 2010 and what to look for in 2011

The best listens of the past year, and a guide to what you can expect to be in heavy rotation in 2011.

We regularly donned our earphones in 2010 for good reason: it was a banner year for inspired music. Dan Hancox, Ben East and Graeme Thompson round up the best listens of the past 12 months, and offer a guide to what you can expect to be in heavy rotation in 2011
The-Dream - Love King
With Timbaland's fall from grace, Terius Nash is perhaps now America's leading r'n'b super-producer, responsible for both Rihanna's Umbrella and Beyonce's Single Ladies, among countless others. In his third solo album as The-Dream, his qualities as an auteur are again brought to the fore, following his 2009 masterpiece Love vs Money.
His world is one of romantic grandstanding, ambition and bombast so exaggerated as to be utterly absurd - the incredible thing is that unlike Kanye West, who suffers from the same self-delusions, Nash pulls it off. The title track is the perfect example of irresistibly catchy modern pop r'n'b, a perfect balance of hooks, melodies and skittering drums.
But it is the album's central trio of seamlessly interconnected tracks where Love King peaks - from the Prince-like romp of Yamaha, through the crumbling romance of Nikki Pt 2, and into the utter dejection of Abyss.
* Dan Hancox
The Creole Choir of Cuba - Tande-La
An instantly striking release, Tande-La records the songs of a Cuban choir comprising five male and female singers, singing in Creole, the country's second language.
The choir began in 1994 as Desandann (descendants), a reference to the group's Haitian ancestors, who were forced into de facto slavery in Cuba, having already been brought to Haiti as slaves.
Their songs pay tribute to those ancestors, and they are utterly captivating: interlocking vocal melodies that move between rousing defiance on Peze Cafe and heartfelt lament on L'Atibonite Oh. The emotion becomes almost overpowering at times, but just when the poignancy becomes too much, the gear shifts into one of celebration, or uplifting resilience.
The icing on the cake is that their songs are all performed over subtle, shuffling Caribbean percussion that is both atmospherically appropriate, but also subdued enough that it never gets in the way of the choir.
* DH
The Wants - The Phantom Band
It's one thing to make a debut album that has critics scurrying for superlatives; it's quite another to follow it with a record that's even more dramatic, adventurous, beautiful and ambitious.
Released early in 2009, Checkmate Savage, the first album by the Scottish six-piece The Phantom Band, was a juddering art-rock juggernaut that owed as much to doo-wop as krautrock. The Wants is altogether more expansive, melodic and self-assured. Reference points spin between futuristic funk, Wagnerian bombast, gentle folk and thick dance beats - and in a parallel universe, Mr Natural might even have been a hit single.
Rick Anthony's burnished croon remains the most distinctive element, but this is a record where the whole transcends the sum of its diverse parts. Weaving myth, magic and mystery into every song, The Wants fulfils the promise of an admirably inventive band.
* Graeme Thomson
Own Side Now - Caitlin Rose
A 23-year-old Tennessean whose mum writes for Taylor Swift, Caitlin Rose clearly knows her way around the dusty heartlands of old-time country, but her debut album dares to travel much further afield than her native Nashville.
Despite comparisons to Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, Own Side Now drops in on 1970s AOR, indie-folk, 1960s girl-pop, Ryan Adam's style country-rock, and even covers Fleetwood Mac's That's Alright. If the music skirts promiscuously around the roots genres, lyrically Rose shows her loyalty to country music by forensically chronicling the cruel absurdity of love, unmasking heartbreak's many guises with wry wit and considerable skill. Add in her characterful voice and an ability to write melodies that sound like they've been knocking around forever, and the result is the kind of smart, confident, cohesive album you long to play again the moment it ends.
* GT
Ali & Toumani - Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté
In the Heart of the Moon, released in 2005, was the first ground-breaking, Grammy-winning collaboration between Diabaté, Mali's kora king, and his fellow countryman, guitarist Ali Farka Touré, one of Africa's most venerated musicians. The follow-up, Ali & Toumani, proves even more rewarding.
Recorded in London just a few months before Farka Touré succumbed to bone cancer in March 2006 at the age of 66, the poignant context only makes the bewitching music all the more resonant. Ali & Toumani articulates the pair's father-and-son bond with breathtaking beauty and virtuosity: Touré's Malian blues guitar is deep, rhythmic and assertive, while Diabaté's playing on the 22-string harp-like kora ripples like liquid gold. The result is a musical conversation that says something quietly profound about love, tradition, honour and a culture overflowing with riches.
* GT
Becoming a Jackal - Villagers
Villagers is the nom de plume of Conor J O'Brien, a young Irish singer-songwriter with a knack for smuggling strange contraband into what would otherwise be fairly conventionally structured songs.
Becoming a Jackal is a hugely impressive debut: the joie de vivre in the clever, unusual arrangements and lightness of touch in O'Brien's keen sense of melody succeeds in keeping a variety of balls airborne throughout. His potent voice whispers, chides, screams, consoles - and, on Pieces, literally howls - while the lyrics are literate in the bruised, romantic Irish tradition, painting impressionistic landscapes rather than drawing portraits.
These songs are full of fevers, omens, sudden darknesses, saints and snakes; often, something terrible seems to have recently occurred. Yet although Becoming a Jackal is hardly upbeat, somehow it is immense fun.
* GT
Hadestown - Anaïs Mitchell
A song-cycle adapted from a folk-opera based on the myth of Orpheus might sound daunting, but have no fear. The fourth album by this Vermontian singer-songwriter, Hadestown is a beautiful and accessible record featuring among its "cast" of voices Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Low Anthem's Ben Knox Miller and Ani DiFranco.
Transposing the Underworld to an exploitative company town in Depression-era America, the narrative unravels gracefully, poetry winning out over exposition. The songs explore a deeply topical fear - "The enemy is poverty / And the wall keeps out the enemy" - but also ask searching questions about the nature of oppression and the role of art in austere times.
Crucially, Mitchell delivers on the music, mixing blues, folk, speakeasy jazz, chanson, chamber music, Cuban rhythms and a pinch of doleful indie-gloom in a startlingly accomplished work packed with spice, humour and emotion.
* GT
The National: High Violet
Yes, we know. The National in The National. It wasn't just this Brooklyn band's impeccable name that brought them to our attention this year, though, but a fifth album that finally made good on years of promise.
High Violet - in places unashamedly so - was undoubtedly their bid for the mainstream. A rock record full of drama, pathos and a wisdom that can only come with age. And while Matt Berninger's poetically unstable lyrics and unmistakable tenor have always provided the band's intrigue, this time they married such indie-band concerns with gloriously epic and engaging tunes.
So it was perfectly possible to happily sing along to the heartbreakingly magnificent Bloodbuzz Ohio - even though it was essentially a song about the perilous grip of money (or lack of it). That's The National: mournful, intelligent and, finally, recognised for being so. Lovely album sleeve, too.
* Ben East
Vampire Weekend: Contra
Within the first minute of Vampire Weekend's second album, the frontman Ezra Koenig rhymed horchata with aranciata. It did little to assuage the accusation that this preppily posh band made music for Harvard students.
But this was just reverse snobbishness: it is possible for guitar-based bands to have more range and scope than Oasis, and Vampire Weekend proved it with a record full of zip, warmth and - crucially - ideas.
Contra is bursting at the seams with lovely Afro-pop, sunny nods to calypso, inventive synth pop and raucous punk-pop. But whereas, in the wrong hands, this would be a messy grab-bag of styles, their latest offering was arranged with consummate skill and underpinned with a proper pop sensibility.
It seems it's still easier to chide them for their privileged backgrounds - but as the energetic Koenig proved on their tours around the world this year, this is a band worth celebrating.
* BE
LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening
James Murphy announced before the release of this record that it would be his last as LCD Soundsystem. In which case, it was quite a sign-off note.
A record of blistering punk-funk and shouty indie-rock that also revealed Murphy's real love - the gurgling synths of electro - might not sound so different from LCD Soundsystem's previous two efforts. But what has always set Murphy apart is his lyrics (not least because he's unafraid to laugh at himself) and here he layered his worries about ageing, relationships and (slightly annoyingly) record companies, on to a new melodic sensibility.
It meant This Is Happening was that rarest of beasts: a dance music record dripping with both emotion and songcraft. A fitting epitaph, then - in fact, it's obvious why Murphy called time on LCD Soundsystem. It's doubtful whether he'd ever be able to better this.
* BE
The best to come in 2011
James Blake - James Blake
The hype around this young Londoner reached fever pitch when the BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe declared Blake's first proper single The Limit to Your Love "the hottest record in the world" on its release. With a haunting voice, a musical schooling that takes in classic soul, jazz, dubstep and even classical compositions, he certainly stands out from the crowd. His self-titled debut is released in February, and promises to be very, very good indeed.
Willow Smith
It's difficult for most of us to comprehend the idea that any pop star was born in the year 2000, especially when the pop star in question is the offspring of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith. But then Willow Smith's Whip My Hair was no ordinary debut single: infectious to the point of provoking insanity, its carefree abandon made it the most joyous pop song of the year. Her debut album is due in March.
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Most recently seen rekindling her collaboration with John Parrish on their second joint album, 2009's A Woman a Man Walked By, the raven-haired poetess and singer-songwriter is set to return with her first solo album in four years, entitled Let England Shake scheduled for February. Written on the Forehead, an advance track posted on her website, suggests seasick strangeness, muddled samples, and all of Harvey's customary idiosyncracy.
Outkast comeback?
The duo who made flamboyant, funk-infused hip-hop impossible not to love for much of the 2000s haven't released an album as Outkast since 2006's Idlewild, but fans have been promised this will happen in 2011. The problem is, with Big Boi doing so well with his solo debut, and Andre 3000's still to come, that their respective stars now seem to be in different orbits.
Pulp comeback
During 1995's Britpop Wars, the correct answer to the question "who do you prefer, Blur or Oasis?" was "Pulp". Jarvis Cocker's band of Sheffield misfits rode out the 1980s as merrily obscure indie wildcards, but the 1990s belonged to them, and their succession of lyrically inspired synth-pop anthems. They'd been quiet since their final album, 2001's We Love Life - until they announced to widespread glee in November that they would reform to headline a series of 2011 summer festivals.
Amy Winehouse comeback
Controversy and Amy Winehouse have been on dangerously close terms for several years now, and it can be easy to forget that prior to that she produced one of the albums of the decade in Back to Black in 2006. Hopefully, reminders will be forthcoming in 2011: she will be the star attraction at Gulf Bike Week in Dubai in February, and her new album is currently described as "nearing completion" - which could mean almost anything; let's hope for the best, though.
Lady Gaga - Born This Way
Whether it was wearing a dress made of meat, making promotional videos longer than most feature films, courting political controversy in her native US, or "simply" dominating the world's pop radios, malls, TVs, awards ceremonies, arenas and newspapers, 24-year-old Stefani Germanotta can quite comfortably lay claim to be the pop star of 2010. The strange thing about her stratospheric rise to prominence is she hasn't released a full album since her 2008 debut The Fame. BornThis Way, which will be released some time in 2011.
Beyoncé
If 2010 saw Lady Gaga steal Beyoncé's crown as Queen of World Pop, it seemed to be a friendly rivalry - first Gaga featured on Beyoncé's Videophone, then Beyoncé featured on Gaga's Telephone: pop music can be confusing like that. While both were huge hits, Beyoncé's been unusually quiet lately. The follow-up to 2008's I Am. Sasha Fierce is in production though, and is due out next year.
Wyclef Jean
If I Were President: The Haitian Experience
He may have been frustrated in his entirely serious attempt to run for president of Haiti - on the grounds of not having been resident in the past five years - but the ex-Fugee Wyclef Jean is turning his passion for his troubled homeland back to his philanthropic work, and relatedly, his music. The tracks already available from this album are promising: a mixture of soulful torch songs and more uplifting, politically charged anthems such as Election Time.
Jay-Z+Kanye West
With the world's two biggest rap stars poised to unite on a joint album, you can guarantee you'll get plenty of advance warning about this release. What's not clear at this stage, with Kanye the musician being rapidly swallowed by Kanye the ego, and Jay-Z some way past his best, is whether it will be a total catastrophe, or a project worthy of the hype it's already generating. Whatever happens, it'll be fascinating to find out.
* Dan Hancox