Welcome to the 2010 edition of the Musical Bacon Calendar.¹ December crept up on me this year, but thankfully I had a four hour plane ride in which I was able to comb through all the 2010 albums and quickly establish my top 31 of the year, enabling me to kick things off before midnight tonight. And wouldn’t you know it, as I’ve been mulling things over throughout the day, I have already modified the list I wrote not 10 hours ago.² So, without further adieu:

#31 on the 2010 Musical Bacon Calendar

In This Light On This Evening by Editors

My love for the Editors took a major hit after I saw them perform at the Showbox on February of this year. As I wrote then:

In the end, I think what brought the show down the most may have been the new songs. It’s hard to enliven music that, while recorded and reproduced beautifully in my headphones, generally leaves one feeling bored when performed. And no matter how hard a band can try to bring the songs to life on stage, they’re doomed from the start.

While I had listened to In This Light On This Evening many many times up to that performance (the album was released in the UK in October of 2009, and in the States in January 2010), I subsequently shelved it, never to return. This was partly due to my changed listening habits: I went to more shows in 2010 than ever before (I think), and I found it easiest to simply listen to whoever’s show I was going to next. But that couldn’t have been the whole story, because there are a handful of albums I’ve continued to listen to throughout the year in spite of that band not having a pending live performance in Seattle. The truth was that the Editors’ performance that night was so staged, I just felt I couldn’t go back.

Until this morning. I ended up accidentally playing the album in my headphones while developing this list. And quickly determined that they deserved to be added to the Top 31 of the year. The album itself is quite a departure for the band, going from guitar-lead songs to letting keyboards drive the melody. But the general feel remained the same: classic quite-loud-quiet, Joy Division / Depeche Mode-like structures. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just an observation. Hello, my name is Royal, and I like goth music. You should, too.

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1. Formerly known as the Musical Advent Calendar, I have abandoned this Christian-laden name as it doesn’t relate very well to the task at hand, in the following ways: a) a true advent calendar counts down to Dec. 25. This calendar counts down to Dec. 31. b) This is not a Christian publication, and has nothing to do with Christ, but everything to do with bacon. OK, maybe not everything. But it has more to do with bacon than it does (Jesus H.) Christ. c) It’s more fun to have Musical Bacon. ↩

2. Earlier today, I had originally thought She & Him’s Volume 2 would be my #31 on the calendar. But after having listened again to In This Light On This Evening again today, it narrowly beat out Zooey and M. Apologies to those two people out there that I had prematurely revealed what I thought would be today’s charted band. Feel free to consider Volume 2 #32 on the list. ↩

One of the stranger things I’ve seen in a long while: Hot Chip, with the Bonnie “Prince” Billy version of “I Feel Better.” Not sure how I feel about any of it, but had to share it regardless.

Yellow Ostrich is the brainchild of Alex Schaaf, out of New York City. Most of the music he’s made over the last couple years is created entirely by himself. And did I mention that you can download it all for free? But slip him a few bucks for the effort — support good people making good music!

/via @loserboy

Chills. Those solos. My god.

merlin:

Dire Straits - “Sultans Of Swing” (OGWT; Recorded: Jan. 1978; Broadcast: May ‘78)

Gold. Taped two weeks before they started recording their first record—a full nine months before it was released.

Featuring variations on not one, but two, of my favorite guitar solos.

The man pulls-off like a mofo.

Trust me, this guy is amazing. John O, aka Diamond Rings, opened for Perfume Genius when I saw him play at the Crocodile recently, and he blew my mind. Read the review I wrote about the show to learn more about him, and keep your eyes/ears out for Diamond Rings’ debut album, out on Oct. 25. It‘s going to be HUGE.

/via @BrittneyBush

A rather long video that you don’t need to watch, but should bring yourself to put on in the background and listen to as you go about your day.

I just saw Frightened Rabbit for the second time last week, and the video above was recorded between those two sets. Neither time I saw them did they perform The National’s “Fake Empire” (47:40) or the Hold Steady’s “Southtown Girls” (1:06:23), but both of those covers make it well worth the price of admission to watch this awesome video.

Enjoy.

Mos Def, “Casa Bey”

An astute friend of mine took me to task for liking the Ceelo Green video I posted this morning, saying that the video was basically crap. So I feel the need to clarify that it was the song that I found great, not the video. That video is your typical, run-of-the-mill motion graphic, circa 2008. It appears that no thought was put into the creation of that video, other than to think “We want the words “FUCK YOU!” to be huge!”

Then that same astute friend shared the above video for the song “Casa Bey,” by Mos Def, most famous for his appearance in Stuff White People Like. Now this is a video I can get behind. Directed by Coodie & Chike.

Ceelo Green (from Gnarls Barkley), “F*$K YOU!” (NSFW — duh.)

I saw this a few days ago, and loved it then. But I quickly moved on. Now that it’s making a 2nd turn through my RSS reader, I’m giving it another listen. Released just last Friday, I’m betting on this song to be the anthem from 2010. Mark my words.

SO GOOD!