ALBUMS (descending points)
1. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2. M.I.A. - Kala
3. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
4. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
5. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
7. Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends
8. Kanye West - Graduation
9. Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm
10. Art Brut - It's a Bit Complicated

TRACKS
1. Studio - Self Service (Short Version)
2. Panda Bear - Bros
3. Pastor Troy - Saddam
4. LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
5. Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
6. Spoon - The Underdog
7. Les Savy Fav - Raging in a Plague Age
8. Kanye West - Drunk and Hot Girls
9. White Williams - New Violence
10. R. Kelly - Real Talk

ARTISTS
1. M.I.A.
2. MGMT
3. LCD Soundsystem
4. Studio
5. Prodigy

COMMENTS
I just decided that I hate subtlety, and that it's arrogant of a band to ask for more than three minutes of our timemoney. Meanwhile, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to hear something indescribably life- and music- and world-changing (because new-plug-in-mastering) every time we slip on the 'phones. Better if the shit's mastered LOUD, so we don't have to bother futzing with the volume level, because sometimes our keyboard is fucked and we have to hold down "fn" and then punch at "F5" just to get the shit LOUDER, and we have a Craigslist date at 1400 hrs, some i-banking ho, so definitely no time for wasted keystrokes.

Thinking about it, Spoon must be the worst band in the world. Like on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, on "Don't Make Me a Target," during the vamp, they extend the last measure of the second and third reps by two beats to let the piano drop beastly low, creating this snaky confusing 6/4 thing, which takes like 37 attentive listens to figure out but doesn't really help me get my drink on. Then, "The Ghost of You Lingers", they just keep tap-a-tappin' that staccato piano like Tom Hanks doing foot "Chopsticks" in Big, with like eight "singing" Britt Daniels panned all over the place, the different ghostly timbres and textures confusing as shit, and no drums ever drop, so how are you supposed to dance to it? "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" throws us a fucking bone, finally, pounding terra firma Motown drums that encourage serious banging of the head and never really let up, but again these guys seem to think they're too good for flatulent saw-wave synths. "Don't You Evah" finds a very nice comedown groove, and the jaunty misspelling of "ever" (deliberate?) in the title is a plus, but it needs more guitar solos. I wish "Rhthm & Soul" repeated the "get your ankles movin'" line more and the one about Kazaam less, and although it's great how Britt "ungh"s sexily along with the bass hits, what the fuck are "eckin' soldiers"? Anyway they ruin that song's passable sonic novelty by going straight back to upbeats on "Eddie's Ragga." Well, at least the lyrics are relatable ("And it'd been so long since I'd been suitably high/ So we did an airborne, settled in for the night"). "The Underdog" is the seventh song, and here's what you will probably think when you hear it: Wow, Spoon really must be crazy if they think people still care about the Kinks, and plus what's this song doing on this album when they could have placed it on Royal Tannenbaums OST alongside all that other incontinent grandpa shit and cashed in? "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" bothers me very little, because I can relate to the content. "Bring a mirror to my face." I do, every day! Nor does it hurt that the chorus kinda roars, amplitude-wise, even if it does peter out rather discursively in some classical (read: non-amplified) guitar riffing. "Finer Feelings", the ninth song, sees Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's first serious experimentation with sampling. On the ninth song! Anyway, this track's wistful yet amiable melodies, carried in the sweet tones of American-made amplified guitar, are compromised by a regrettable bridge section wherein all musical sounds drop out completely and all we hear is crowd ambiance. Someone told me, actually, that if you play that part of the song backwards, it reveals sobering high-level Illuminati secrets. The same dude who tipped me off on the Illuminati thing also said "Black Like Me", the album's closing number, sounds a lot like Let It Bleed-era Stones only shorter, less grandiose, more demure, more hedged, which I didn't think my dick could possibly get any softer, yet here we are.