A Baker's Dozen For 2010 - #13

This is the first my posts about The 13 best albums of the year. Of all the good music this year, I feel only these baker's dozen deserve in-depth analysis. So with that, here we go...

Heaven Is Whenever - The Hold Steady

It's been easy to call Hold Steady albums epic in the past. The first thing you feel from the opening song of Heaven Is Whenever is this album will be a little different. Sure, their signature best-bar-band sound is in tact. But the best songs on this album like "Sweet Part Of The City" and "The Weekenders" have a subtle touch. When I saw them live this summer, it actually helped their set out tremendously. Now they have a handful of classic slow burners to pepper in between all the beer swigging favorites. It created a nice ebb and flow they were missing before.

I especially love "We Can Get Together". A song about the mystical moments created with music flowing from vinyl to needle to speaker to the space between us? It's music geek porn. It works so well because Craig Finn is an obvious music geek himself. He clearly knows the feeling when a track 'don't sound that simple any more'. It could be because you learn about the guys who wrote the song, or it could be you taking the track and adding it to your own life's soundtrack. No matter the reason, to true music masochists those songs do become our heaven.