Le Noise

For the second consecutive year at Hidden Track, we concocted our innovative little experiment for the year-end Best Albums list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of well over 100 nominees, whereby most everything our contributors recommended made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently and blindly vote on the whole list on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees as some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we deployed our egghead algorithm for rating albums: (two times the average rating) + (the total number of votes). At that point, we took the top 25 highest scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2010. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

We have hit the midway point of our week long countdown, let’s check out albums number 11-15…

15) Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record

Key Tracks: World Sick, Sentimental X’s

Sounds Like: Music for Zooey Deschanel to act cute to in her next movie

The Skinny: Forgiveness Rock Record is absolutely not an album that should be written about in just 100 words. In fact, there’s more to say than that about the opening track alone, World Sick, which opens the record with a cathartic, seven-minute space-out that’s custom made for a montage of one’s own daydreams and could easily be considered the song of the year. And the entire album flutters along with this same airy chamber pop vibe, giving off the feeling of a Jon Brion or Polyphonic Spree production, whereby each track weaves itself in and out of the mix like instruments in an orchestra, and the whole thing comes together to form a moving piece of music. Team Canada is back.

READ ON for the next four albums in our countdown…