Top 10 Albums of 2010: 1 Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire are one of those rare bands capable of such consistent and effortless feats of greatness, it almost becomes too easy to take for granted.

They returned seeming to have matured, aged and developed by vastly more than the five years since the release of Funeral. The quirks and youthful rallying cries of that era-defining debut are long gone. In their place, the subtler, more restrained sound of a band nostalgic for a bygone age, and seemingly on the brink of a cultural apocalypse.

It's a concept album in the very best sense, packed with deft touches of attention-to-detail and a narrative punctuated with musical motifs. Even the artwork was a visual metaphor - eight different varieties, yet all essentially the same, just like the vast and interchangeable 'endless suburbs, stretched out thin and dead' that were once home.

Of course, the journey that begins with 'grab your mother's keys, we're leaving' packs in more than just barren, bland landscapes and 'the modern kids' who live there now. The disillusionment runs parallel with a sense of urgency at wanting to live before its too late: 'So can you understand / why I want a daughter while I'm still young? / I want to hold her hand / And show her some beauty / Before the damage is done.'

Musically there's a light and shade that makes this 16 track opus seem almost short, while avoiding the overbearing earnestness which previous album Neon Bible arguably fell into. So Sprawl I, an almost funereal lament to lost youth in which Win Butler sings of 'the loneliest day of my life', is followed by the Régine Chassagne sung Sprawl II, which - in a quite unexpected move - sounds like Blondie doing disco. Well, specifically, Heart of Glass.

An album about the inertia that exists in that gap between growing up and growing old ultimately left you feeling glad to be alive now to appreciate a once-in-a-generation brilliant band at the peak of their powers.

It's befitting of their complexity that, in making a record about the transitory nature of yesterday's values, fading childhood memories and dissolving landscapes, Arcade Fire produced a work destined for lasting greatness.

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 2 Jónsi - Go

Rumour has it that Jón Þór Birgisson was intending a stripped down, low-key acoustic affair for his first post-Sigur Rós solo album. If that story really is true then something, somewhere really did go quite spectacularly wrong.

A glorious, technicolour cacophony of sound, it almost literally explodes into life within seconds of opener Go Do teasing with a stuttering vocal sample and a finger picked acoustic guitar.

Flutes flutter, string sections soar and tribal drums build to a towering crescendo. It's music so brimming with unbridled optimism and effervescent joy that it's hard not to imagine it being accompanied by an explosion of fireworks and confetti.

The 100mph percussive stomp of Animal Arithmetic sounded like an orchestra getting drunk with a marching band while cinematic epics like Around Us and Sinking Friendships are surely destined to soundtrack the uplifting finales to nature documentaries for years to come. And if there was a song more breathtaking in scope and ambition last year than Boy Lilikoi I didn't hear it.

There would be a danger of Go teetering into saccharine territory in less capable hands, but the sheer scale of its innocent wide-eyed wonderment overwhelmed any attempt at cynicism. It also reaffirmed the fact that Jónsi is possessed of one of the most distinctive and emotive voices in music today.

If Sigur Rós never do return from their indefinite hiatus, it's reassuring to know that even on his own Jónsi is capable of making music as unique, uplifting and extraordinary as this.

Spotify: Listen to Go by Jónsi

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 3 Vampire Weekend - Contra

On album number two Vampire Weekend seemed capable of almost anything.

Mariachi brass, calypso, MIA samples, ska on speed; all this effortlessly woven into a record which was ultimately a sparsely produced and intimate listen.

Key to its brilliance was the warm and melodic lilt of singer Ezra Koenig - at its best on the falsetto refrain of White Sky and the gentle croon of the album's (almost) title track. It gave Contra an emotional depth which - for all its ideas, hooks and eccentricities - their debut never quite managed.

Lyrically, their unique brand of aloof intellectualism gave way to something far more personal. At its best, the running exploration of class, guilt and social convention is almost reminiscent of a Henry James novel. Like, for instance, the protagonist of Taxi Cab who, "When the taxi door was opened wide / I pretended I was horrified / By the uniform clothes outside / Of the courtyard gate."

Giving Up The Gun may have been the most obvious standout on first listen - a double entendre laden straightforward 21st century indie anthem - but the real delights subtly revealed themselves over time. Fortunate then, that for an album so densely packed with quirky eccentricities, it was also addictively listenable.

Spotify: Listen to Contra by Vampire Weekend

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 4 Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From A Young Man

'Rage, rage against the dying of the light,' a famous Welshman once wrote.

It would be premature to start reading the last rites for the Manics, but if they never were to make another album then Postcards From A Young Man would be a worthy epitaph to popular music's last great idealists

Eighteen years on from Generation Terrorists, their passion and articulate anger still burn just as bright. But on album number 10 it seemed the Manics finally discovered a way to channel the angry young upstarts of yore without having to contrive a reinvention or resort to becoming their own tribute act.

The betrayal of the left, the decline of British manufacturing and the Orwellian dystopia at the heart of the internet are all pithily picked apart with the scythe of what may be Nicky Wire's most consistently brilliant set of lyrics.

Meanwhile, the radio-friendly choruses of ELO, stadium bombast of Boston and guitar heroics of Slash are ramped all the way up to 11 by James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore. Some Kind of Nothingness waltzed with elegant grace while All We Make Is Entertainment was probably the first and without doubt best song ever to combine duelling guitar solos with a withering critique of economic globalisation and free-market capitalism.

In other words, it's every bit as life-affirmingly good as you'd hope 'one last shot at mass communication' from the Manics would be.

Spotify: Listen to Postcards From A Young Man by Manic Street Preachers

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 5 The National - High Violet

The National's fifth album is a hypnotic tour-de-force full of understated anthems for a bewildered generation.

I'd previously resisted the lure of the critically lauded New Yorkers, put off by talk of an ever-so-serious band who make rock music for adults and whose albums are 'growers' - so often a byword for music that's easy to admire but hard to enjoy.

But there comes a moment, on the second or third listen to High Violet, where songs which at first failed to register much of an impression, reveal themselves to be hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck raising works of delicate majesty.

Intricate arrangements and oblique poetic lyrics stealthily lodge themselves in your head until the music carries on playing for days after the album stops.

The haunting and world-weary baritone of Matt Berninger is the perfect medium for songs wracked with existential anxiety, self doubt and heartbreak.

But to label it gloomy fails to scratch the surface. Its emotional palette is richly textured with so many more colours than that - albeit all of them dark.

It would be hard to pick out a stand-out track from High Violet simply because it is full of them. Like a fine wine it seems to improve with age - and had it been released earlier in the year it could well have been top of my list.

Spotify: Listen to The National High Violet

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 6 The Coral - Butterfly House

This sepia tinged, harmony drenched collection of flawless 60s folk-pop marked the sound of The Coral coming of age.

Nearly a decade on from their debut, it had seemed the Wirralers were destined to slide into oblivion, with last year's greatest hits package an obligatory epilogue to a once promising career.

But the departure of guitar wizard Bill Ryder-Jones after 2008's Roots and Echoes obviously had a reinvigorating effect. Previously prone to padding out albums with self-indulgent jams, Butterfly House saw The Coral return more focused than ever before.

From the moment the Spaghetti Western-esque percussion of opener More Than A Lover burst out of the traps, it was clear this was a band with a newfound sense of purpose.

Throughout its 12 tracks - or 17 for those with the equally brilliant bonus disc - James Skelly and co didn't put a foot wrong. It's an album awash with pitch-perfect harmonies, shimmering guitars, dreamy soundscapes and timeless melodies.

True, it may not have the experimental streak and wild unpredictably of their landmark debut, but in years to come I suspect it will be this album to which fans return.

It may have taken a while to get there, but in Butterfly House The Coral finally crafted something of a minor masterpiece.

Spotify: Listen to an acoustic version of The Coral Butterfly House

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 7 Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today

Before Today, the first major label album from low-fi cult hero Ariel Pink, is a glorious mass of contradictions that really shouldn't work but somehow does.

It is both lovingly nostalgic in its influences yet unmistakably 21st century in the way they are melded together. If you didn't know any better you'd think it was the work of a genius DJ armed with a crate full of classic 70s MOR vinyl, a handful of west coast psychedelia 45s and a 70s cop show soundtrack.

The schizophrenic and breathless hopping of genres - often several times within the same song - belie the fact that Before Today is as smooth as Lionel Richie's larynx and chock-full of guilty pleasure ear candy.

Every song is woven with wierdness, but produced with the glossy sheen of classic Fleetwood Mac.

The pinnacle of its achievements Round and Round already has the air of a spine-tingling classic.

Spotify: Listen to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Before Today

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 8 Yeasayer - Odd Blood

It starts off sounding like a cyborg in a medieval torture chamber and finishes like the deranged funk offspring of Prince partying like it's 1985.

2010 saw Yeasayer transformed from world music dabbling curio of the Brooklyn indie scene, to all-conquering, festival-stealing, pioneers of experimental guitar music.

For such an eclectic and sonically adventurous album, Odd Blood is refreshing lean and impressively lacking in self-indulgence.

Lead single Ambling Alp (below) reinvented Yeasayer as a pop band, and managed the impressive feat of combining one of the year's catchiest choruses with a metaphor about an Italian boxer from the 1930s.

If Odd Blood has one flaw, it is that it occasionally stumbles under the sheer volume of the myriad ideas packed into its relatively brief 40 minutes.

But at its best - like album highlight ONE - Yeasayer proved themselves to be masters in their own offbeat universe of unique and otherworldly synth pop.

Spotify: Listen to Yeasayer Odd Blood

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 9 Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

In the quick-fix age of bitesize attention spans where the karaoke colosseum is king and the charts are awash with production line pop, the existence of Gorillaz alone is something to be thankful for. The fact they somehow managed to sneak a 16-track environment themed concept album featuring the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music and Mark E Smith into the mainstream however, is nothing short of phenomenal.

It's an album truly epic in ambition. And while it may not always reach the dizzy heights it so valiantly strives for, it's by far Damon Albarn's most fully realised collaborative record yet.

When the guest spots work - like Bobby Womack's ragged vocal tearing through the speakers on the electro-soul of flagship single Stylo - the results are electric. When they don't you find yourself admiring the idea rather than enjoying its execution; a common feature of Gorillaz albums once repeated listens have shorn them of their novelty.

However, any body of work which can boast the irrepressibly catchy Superfast Jellyfish, the charming Euro-oriental lounge pop of To Binge and half of The Clash in its backing band, is clearly never going to be far from greatness.

And in standout track On Melancholy Hill, Damon Albarn delivered a Waterloo Sunset for the 21st Century and his most touching ballad since... well actually, probably ever.

Spotify: Listen to Gorillaz Plastic Beach

Top 10 Albums of 2010: 10 Belle & Sebastian - Write about Love

"Make me dance, I want to surrender" opens the Glaswegians' eighth long-player in a fitting statement of intent, for Write About Love is unmistakably the work of Belle & Sebastian mark 2 - the post 2000 version with dancing basslines, drivetime MOR keyboards and infectious choruses to spare.

At times you wonder what became of the fey and quirky indie darlings who made If You're Feeling Sinister, such is the transformative effect of producer Tony Hoffer's Hollywood makeover. Nonetheless, barring a couple of missteps (the guest spot from Norah Jones is as ill-advised as it sounds) Write about Love is nothing short of a masterclass in subtly infectious and intelligent 1960s pop.

Opener I Didn't See It Coming has to be up there with Belle & Sebastian's finest, effortlessly segueing one musical motif to another and building from an opening whisper to a dizzying climax. Meanwhile, the mod-tinged I Want The World To Stop - all lilting arpeggios, walking basslines and a bittersweet vocal exchange - would surely have been a dancefloor-filling chart-topper had it been released 40 years ago.

Musically, Write about Love may at times sound lightyears apart from 1996 debut Tigermilk, but it still inhabits the same doe-eyed romantic world of unrequited longing, wistful nostalgia and late-night soul-searching that Belle & Sebastian soundtrack better than anybody else.

Spotify: Listen to Belle & Sebastian Write about Love