Best albums of 2010:

Richard Caceres - "John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano: The Second Grade Book"

Richard plays every piece in THE student's songbook and records the perfect definitive version. Stops, works on the next one, records. Richard is a pioneer member of the Crystal Palace and a treasured memory is waking up from naps to Richard slowly, deliberately, working his way through a Bill Evans piece. There was hesitance, but singing brilliance, like an alien just landed on earth.

Iji - "Cool Dream"
Antarctica Takes It! - "Constellations"

Zack and Dylan's pop visions! Gathering friends and forces to create well-realized and colossal records that stick with you. "Cool Dream" is reggae and Elephant 6 and soul, "Constellations" is old-time rock with self-aware interventions. Both very great!

Joanna Newsom - "Have One On Me"
Owen Pallett - "Heartland"

Honorary degrees for these kids, wonderful composers, great singers.

Vampire Weekend - "Contra"

I could put this on with any one of my friends. Still a marvel.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafiffi - "Before Today"

Woom - "Muu's Way"

Adorable bay area duo. Cut up pop pieces.

Kanye West - "My Beautiful Twisted Fantasy" Sufjan Stevens - "The Age of Adz"

Big pop overthetops; egos and arrangements. Kanye wins; he's got the imagination and knows how to share the spotlight. He's even got his own little Sufjan.

Best albums I found out about in 2010:

Franco Battiato - Fetus
Duncan Browne - Duncan Browne

Franco Battiato's Fetus (recommended to me by Nessie) is a minimal, striking record. Basic synthesizers and noise combine with Franco's conversational voice in a way similar to Jose Afonso's best albums.

Duncan Browne's self titled record is similar. The first track, if sung in Italian could well pass for Battiato. But Duncan's singing and guitar playing are phenomenal. I would very highly recommend

The Crucifucks - Wisconsin

Another punk album I wish existed in my life when I was growing up.

Little Feat - Feats Don't Fail Me Now

"Rock and Roll Doctor" is terrific! Its like I'm getting up from my table at some crappy bar to approach some perfect sudden angel and as the alcohol reaches my legs, I garble the amazing line I'd dreamt up, but it doesn't matter everything is going to go perfectly anyway. "Oh Atlanta" is pretty sturdy, but doesn't fully deliver. Maybe I have to have been there for it to make sense. The rest of the album boogies along with only the Fan sticking out to me as being an interesting midpoint between Zappa and the Minutemen. Until! The last few minutes where "Tripe Face Boogie" is suddenly knocked into pointillist fusion world. So suprising! What a wonderful band!

Godley and Creme - L, Freeze Frame

The crazier exploding with ideas half of 10cc.

Micachu - Jewellry
Haruomi Hosono - Tropical Dandy
Incredible String Band - Wee Tam/The Big Huge
Pointer Sisters - Break Out

Jules and the Polar Bears - Got no Breeding

Mix Weird Al with Elvis Costello wearing Springsteen's jeans. Jules is like a power pop mad scientist, frozen in those "I've got it!" moments, hair standing on end in true eighties fashion.

It'd be weird to be his girlfriend. He's got every element of our relationship figured out impeccably. He dated Aimee Mann, didn't he? Picture Aimee Mann puzzling over Jules Shear's intense intellectualization of every emotion during the slow lip-syncing montage in Magnolia.

John Prine - Sweet Revenge and Common Sense

My name is John Tyler Martin. I am 27 years old and I live in Santa Cruz California.Occasionally, I perform music live with a band called James Rabbit.

I have been obsessively creating since grade school. First I made comics, sometimes with friends, but then hundreds on my own. Next I made board games and card games by myself. And for the past twelve or so years it has been CDs.

I began writing songs in fifth grade, when I was 10, and made recordings on cassette with our small Yamaha portasound keyboard and a guitar I had ‘borrowed’ from my aunt. This faded into the background after a while, because I was only able to record one track at a time. I also hadn’t learned anything about music yet and was only guessing, with mostly atonal results.

In middle school, I had a ‘band’ with my friend Alex and my brother Conner. We were called Doomsday Parade and recorded about 10 albums. Every time we had a practice coming up, I would write as many songs as I could, Alex would write a riff and Conner would drum. We would practice once and then record. In my memory it kind of sounded like the Fall, though I would have liked it to sound like 3-11 or the Smashing Pumpkins.

In high school, my friend Dan got a multi-track recording program on his computer. He and I started a band called Ultra Secret and recorded five albums. At first, Ultra Secret was he and I writing music on his piano and then recording it on his computer.

When I got my own computer, I started the ‘band’ James Rabbit, which at first was me entirely by myself. Around the same time, my friend Max was making recordings of his own music at the same time on his computer. We would get together and share recordings at Dan’s house, drinking Pepsi, playing video games, and reviewing each others albums.

James Rabbit evolved very slowly. Over the course of the next few years I started playing music with my brother again and started figuring out how to play other instruments. Each time I finished an album, Dan’s house would get a copy and Max would get a copy. If I liked an album a lot, I would hand out to a few more friends.

In 2003, I went to college in Santa Cruz and played live in bands for the first time. 1,025 exclamation points was a girl named Jen and I playing guitar and keyboard. Nicky and the Dreamers, another group I played in, was a party band. Back in Fresno on breaks from school I had a band called Sex Funeral. I continued to record James Rabbit albums in Fresno at every available opportunity.

I recorded my first album in Santa Cruz in the house I live in now, the Crystal Palace, in 2006. Our downstairs neighbors would complain whenever I made a musical sound, so I made a lot of the backing tracks with non-instruments like tennis balls and staplers. Soon after, James Rabbit began regularly performing shows in Santa Cruz, with my brother Conner and my friends Jamie and Libby as the first members of the band. In the next few years, we recorded a couple of albums and played a lot of shows around town and a few tours out and about with a changing roster of musicians.

I spent about fifteen months writing and recording an album called Perfect Waves. I like it, but it isn’t very user-friendly. Its a long album and it was a very taxing process to write and record. It was difficult for our band to learn the songs, so we only ever learned about four of them. The process was so tiresome and so draining and the reaction to the album was so underwhelming that I had to take some time out and retune my process of songwriting and project management.

I have a lot of projects going on at the moment. I have a band called Gay Genius with my friend Nessie, we are writing our second album, Perfection of Dream Space. I am about 7/8 of the way through recording a James Rabbit album called Cactuses. I am about ⅛ way through recording a James Rabbit album called Splendor. I have an EP called Allies 3 that I have written and am looking for a good time to record. And I have a series of EPs called “Can We Be Real?” that I will record when circumstances are right.

I am writing now because I am trying to not write an album that I will begin writing and recording in January 2011. I am writing now in preparation of this album I will begin writing and recording in January 2011, because it is an album with a lot of information. I am getting ready to share a lot.

December 19th 2010