… picked five albums from 2010

End-of-year lists just exist. They are unstoppable, a force of nature that will continue to appear and that you will be compelled to read.

And here’s another one: in no particular order, five great albums from this year. If you don’t have them loaded on to your iPod, you may as well put it in the bin. Or, if you’re less profligate, just buy them and update it – your choice.

Caribou: Swim
This has nailed a spot in quite a few other album of the year lists, and deservedly so. Caribou’s mathematician mastermind apparently said he wanted to make a dance album that sounded like it was recorded under water – a brilliantly simple aim that resulted in a record of deeply textured and beautiful electronic melodies that sounds both like the future of music and as natural as the element that inspired its creation.

Gil Scott-Heron: I’m New Here
Jazz poet and all-round legend Scott-Heron’s comeback album is claustrophobic, at times brooding and at others stunningly delicate. The ‘Godfather of Rap’ has certainly lived – I’m New Here was recorded after a stint in prison for drug offences – and it’s all here: anger, heartbreak and redemption stuffed into a compact running time, with spoken word, Kanye West samples and the aptly picked cover-version title track thrown in for good measure.

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
Another one that will appear in every other list under the sun. If you still haven’t heard it you need to get out of your cave once in a while – maybe put it on the market and move to the suburbs; growing up in the outer environs of Houston certainly didn’t do the band’s Win Butler any harm on this evidence. Big, exhilarating and just ace all over.

Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)
Anyone that thinks any contestant that’s ever appeared on The X-Factor has a “unique recording voice” really needs to take a long, hard listen to some Erykah Badu. This is Badu as funky and inventive as she’s ever been, if in a more personal and playful mood than on the darker social commentary of Amerykah Part One. The mellow soul of Window Seat, a frank reflection on both fame and love, is a highlight.

The Black Keys: Brothers
The Black Keys’ frontman told The Independent that his pretty-bluesy-actually rock band was influenced by hip-hop, not the blues. Well they both shine through here, and gloriously so: Brothers is sleazy, soulful, stripped-back rock music in which, as the band affirmed in that newspaper interview, the groove is always king.