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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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. ↩
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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. ↩