SLUG Magazine | December 2010

	Issue 264 - December 2010

	Top 5 of 2010 To celebrate another year’s end, SLUG handpicked 13 writers to spotlight one of their favorite releases of 2010 in an extended review. Read on for Top 5 lists from SLUG’s contributors and genre-spanning reviews of artists like The Black Keys, Sleigh Bells, Acid Tiger and local artist S.L.F.M.

	Alaska With Mikey I always wanted to go to Alaska. It seems to me that anyone who has snowboarded has dreamed of making it there and having the opportunity to push their snowboarding to the limit. In Alaska anything can happen––good or bad. The landscape alone speaks for itself. Sure the mountains in Utah might be just as tall, but you don’t see them protruding from the ocean like huge fangs. Everything in Alaska just seems bigger and better.
by Bob Plumb
	Localized If there’s a better way to end a year than with a killer show, SLUG knows it not. We’re fucking slaying it with three amazing local groups for December’s Localized. The talent ranges from the acoustic to the dark neo-new-wave and to the eclectically electric jazz. On December 10, John-Ross Boyce & His Troubles will open the show with Night Sweats and The Daniel Day Trio headlining an end-of-decade show unlike any other.
by JP
	Jake Garn Jake Garn began shooting photos in the mid-nineties while enrolled in a basic photography class. In 2002, Garn purchased his first digital SLR camera and his photographic hobby turned into an obsession. Since then Garn’s images have brought him recognition both nationally and internationally—most recently when his work was featured in an episode from Project Runway’s eighth season.

	Top 5: Acid Tiger What initially strikes me about Acid Tiger is the unity it exudes between different forces in the world of underground rock music. Since Acid Tiger self-proclaims that they play a “progressive rock/punk hybrid” on their Myspace, but sound akin to stoner metal, they linguistically interrupt a current (and unfortunate) punk criteria, which enables them to act as a sort of cultural black hole where all that has or ever been is free game to be mauled by the tiger.
by Alexander Ortega
	Top 5: Ariel Pink Ariel Pink is a scary, bat-shit insane homeless man residing in an old abandoned tunnel of reverb. His albums have always been speckled with moments of lucidity and genius, but good portions were just homeless rambling. This time he was given a budget and a producer, who took a cheesecloth and chinois and strained out all of the bad acid vibes.
by Cody Hudson
	Top 5: Autolux Being an Autolux fan takes patience. Their first LP, Future Perfect, was an underground staple after its release in 2004. Four years later they finally revealed the Kid A-esque “Audience No. 2” as a single, which served to satisfy my Autolove for a while. After two additional years of delays and more plays than I can count generated on their Myspace player, Transit Transit saw the light of day.
by Andrew Roy
	Top 5: Baths When Cerulean came out on Anticon earlier this year, critics were quick to lump the 21-year-old Californian’s debut into the burgeoning (and largely made up) chillwave microgenre. Baths took offense to this—it is easy to see why. Instead of being ostensibly effects-driven and wrapped under a gauze of lo-fi consumer electronics, Cerulean is all beats. Crisp, sparkling, low-end rumbling beats are looped with such complexity that they are easy to lose in the shuffle.
by Ryan Hall
	Top 5: Beats Antique Music sometimes described as “belly dance” can be immediately off-putting to listeners bred on a steady diet of rock or dance. Fortunately for fans of the unique, San Fransisco’s Beats Antique carry everything you need in their packs: touches of North African Raï, Bedouin melodies and healthy doses of dubstep. Blind Threshold lends itself to breakdance moves more than any other form of old school technique.
by JP