The Vinyl Princess
CITC Staff Writer
www.thevinylprincess.com

Vinyl Princess
Best Movies Of The Year:
True Grit - Jeff Bridges, more hungover than he was in Crazy Heart? I'm in
Winter's Bone - It's great.
I Am Love - Tilda Swinton as a sad Russian woman married to an Italian textile merchant. Fabulous.
Animal Kingdom - Shakespearean Crime family down under.
Mother and Child - Did not expect to like it. Loved it.
The King's Speech - Everything's already been said.
Exit Through The Gift Shop - Banksy pulls one over on us.

Best album by an artist I sort of stopped listening to:
Ray LaMontagne - God Willin' and The Creek Don't Rise
Nora Jones - Featuring Norah Jones: Great choice of songs, great duets with people like M. Ward, Gillian Welch, and Ryan Adams. The hip hop stuff I could do without.

Best album by an old favorite: Robert Plant and his Band of Joy
Best Single: Jenny and Johnny - "Scissor Runner"
Best Reissue: Jimi Hendrix - West Coast Seattle Boy
Best new discovery: Richmond Fontaine - How did it take me so long to find these guys?
Best artist for me to mock:
Taylor Swift - Is her face frozen like that?
Lady Gaga - Enough already
John Mayer - Stop "sharing" and get yer blues on, ya big fake.
Best Indie Release: The Growlers - Are You In Or Out?

Thomas Cooney
CITC Senior Editor

Thomas Cooney: Let's get one thing straight at the start: there will be no discussion of films this time around. Exactly one year after the Oscars changed the rules so that ten films are nominated for Best Picture instead of five, there weren't even five films good enough. A forgettable year in cinema (cursed probably for awarding Sandra Bullock the Best Actress award in March).

So then what follows will restrict itself to music and music alone. And don't expect me to bandwagon on Mumford and Sons or Arcade Fire. I can't help but think that, especially with the latter, someone's putting us on. It's like the way some unseen, unchallenged cognoscenti force Pynchon on all those unsuspecting college students. I had the great misfortune of having to read almost all of Pynchon as a grad student, and how I didn't end up the "after" in those crystal meth commercials is a small miracle.
Read Thomas' full list >

Wooden Wand
Singer/Songwriter
www.myspace.com/woodenwand

Wooden Wand
Neil Young - Le Noise (Reprise)
The Body - All The Waters Of The Earth Have Turned To Blood (At A Loss)
Bottomless Pit - Blood Under The Bridge (Comedy Minus One)
Bethbewildered - Self-titled (self-released)
Endless Boogie - Full House Head (No Quarter)
The War On Drugs - Future Weather (Secretly Canadian)
Lindstrom And Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool (Smalltown Supersound)
Deer Tick - The Black Dirt Sessions (Partisan)
Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope In The Sky (Young God)
Salem - King Night (Iamsound)

Andrew Smith
Author
www.ghostmedicine.com

Andrew Smith
A couple points first: I'm really picky about the fact that these albums represent 2010 releases; that they do not include remastered or previously released material. Also, I don't claim to have listened to everything that came out in 2010. But I bought a hell of a lot of new albums. These albums that ended up on my list got here because they initially caught my attention with a single or some cut I heard somewhere, and when I went on to explore the depth of the full-length release, I was impressed enough to say...yeah, this is one of the best. Finally, the only albums on this list that are in any particular order are the top three—they are my no-doubt-about-it one-two-three punches of fuck-yeah music that came out in a pretty spectacular year. The remaining seven, you could say, are all tied for fourth.

So, here goes: Read the rest of Andrew's list >

Sharron Kraus
Singer/Songwriter
(www.sharronkraus.com)

Sharron Kraus:
1. Nalle - Wilder Shores of Love (alt.vinyl)
2. Thinguma*jigSaw - Ghoul's Out (Derodidymus)
3. Trembling Bells - Abandoned Love (Honest Jon)
4. Andrew Cronshaw - The Great Dark Water (Acrobat)
5. Yair Yona - Remember (Strange Attractors Audio House)
6. The Magickal Folk Of The Faraway Tree - The Soup & The Shilling (Deserted Village/Deadslackstring)
7. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (Drag City)
8. Stone Breath with The Forest Beggars - The Shepherdess And The Bone-White Bird (Hand/Eye)
9. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To the Sky (Young God)
10. Alasdair Roberts - Too Long in this Condition (Drag City)

Phil Wilson
Singer/Songwriter
www.myspace.com/philwilsonjunebride

Phil Wilson: Albums:
1. Cucumber by The Sexual Objects. Davy Henderson has been crafting a weird pop that somehow manages to cross T Rex with Captain Beefheart since his days in the Fire Engines in the early 1980s. His latest album is a more pop-focused piece than recent work with the Nectarine Number 9. It's packed with ace tunes and grooves. My album of the year.
2. We Come As Aliens by Vic Goddard and The Subway Sect. His best bunch of tunes since the classic "What's The Matter Boy".
3. A Memory is Better Than Nothing by The Television Personalities. A return to form from Dan Treacy, who I truly believe to be the finest songwriter of his generation.
4. S/T by Frankie Rose and The Outs. Not everything I love has been made by middle-aged men ;-)
5. In the Court of the Wrestling Lets by Lets Wrestle. Actually released in 2009, but just re-released in an expanded version. Ramshackle, fractious pop with literate, funny lyrics. Joyous music!

Pop Songs of the year - "Cover the Walls" by Internet Forever. Please forgive their awful name! This is bouncy, noisy pop music for dancing. Makes me happy. A close second would be "Caroline's Radio" by Bubblegum Lemonade. Oh, and "I'm Your Kind of Guy" by The Starlets, which is gorgeous. And "West of La Brea" by The Tartans - the sound of summer sunlight.

Label of the Year - Occultation Records. They have put out wonderful pop records by The Wild Swans, Distractions and The Granite Shore. All are fabulously crafted, elegant and beautifully packaged records. Buy them! And the label has just signed Martin Bramah (founding member of The Fall, ex Blue Orchids), so we have fresh magic to look forward to.

UK Political event of the year - the student protests have rekindled my faith in young people here! We thought we'd lost a generation to X-Box and Facebook. We were wrong.

Alex Green
CITC Editor

Alex Green
Best Movies: The Square, Animal Kingdom, Winter's Bone, When You're Strange, Mother And Child, Exit Through The Gift Shop

Best Albums: The Glass Notes - Dust And Hours, Phil Wilson - God Bless Jim Kennedy, Max Eider - Disaffection, Justin Currie - The Great War, Gaslight Anthem - American Slang.

Song Of The Year - "John Wayne" by The Glass Notes