For the first time in a long time (perhaps ever?), a majority of my favorite ten or so albums of the year are authored primarily or in part by women.

• Treats
• Have One On Me
• Thank Me Later
• Body Talk
• My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• King Night
• Teenage Dream/Animal (they’re the same album, basically)
• Sit Down, Man
• The Monitor
• Don’t Go To School¹

Treats is my runaway favorite album of the year. I wrote a review of it in May, which I’ll quote from because I’m an ass.

I want to see if this album can literally raise the dead. I think it can. I want this album to take my hearing because it’s the last thing I want to hear before I die and I don’t want to die yet. Sleigh Bells’ debut album is so roundly and thoroughly successful that it’s difficult even to talk about.

I also said the album was IMPORTANT like Kid A because it is 1) Spontaneously single-minded and thoroughly well-composedly unified in tone and tenor; and 2) It did not leak, despite its building its buzz primarily via the Blog-o-Sphere. I have a third reason for why the album is so significant. I don’t think they will be able to make another album like it. Ever.

Seeing Sleigh Bells live, it was really clear they only have these songs. They have no other songs. And I don’t know that they can do more with this sound. In this way, they’re like Ratatat (but better. They’re the Hegelian supersession of Ratatat and pop music, basically).²

So this album will really be a one-off document of the moment when noise pop fucked the mainstream. And it’s a real super blast to listen to. All the time, when I want to get psyched up and turn the subway car into my own personal pre-game football locker room, I just turn on and turn up Treats.