It’s been another bad year for the recording industry, but another great year for music fans. Rock ‘n’ roll is alive and well, as is the opportunity to see it performed live. Musicians can still make a living, but they have to hit the road and seize modern marketing opportunities. One thing that will never change is the public’s desire to hear great music. Bands that can deliver still have a chance to write their own ticket.

Top 10 lists are of course inherently subjective, and this observer’s faves will always lean toward the guitar-driven rock side of the music spectrum. I was certain that the debut album from the long-awaited Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band would be topping my list this year, especially after the slew of terrific new tunes they delivered in two stellar shows at the New Orleans Jazzfest back in April. But the album isn’t coming out until 2011. Here’s my take on the best albums and songs that were released in 2010.

10. The Henry Clay People: Somewhere on the Golden Coast
This is just an old-fashioned, ’90s-style indie-alternative rock ‘n’ roll album that stands out with its energetic yet down-to-earth sound. No Pro Tools trickery going on here, just a band plugging into their amps and turning up the volume. It’s got loud guitars with melodic hooks, rocking piano and zeitgeist lyrics from singer/guitarist Joey Siara that tap into this modern era of Depression and discontent. “Working Part Time” is one of the great anthems of the year, while “End of an Empire” sounds like an alt-rock prophecy.

9. The Sword: Warp Riders
The Austin, Texas hard rockers deliver a blast from the past that is easily the best metal album to come along in some time. It’s like a cross between Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy, which equals metal heaven. It’s chock full of great riffs, furious rhythms and tight metal mayhem with a twist of classic rock flavor.

RIYL: Aimee Mann, Tracy Bonham, Carina Round

Juliana Hatfield has had a long and creatively varied musical career. She evolved from her ‘80s jangle rock roots with the Blake Babies, into the tough, confessional rock of her alternative ’90s, before becoming the mature singer songwriter of the current decade. Along the way she was involved in several side and supporting projects, making hers a quite prolific career. A career in which not only did her sound transform, but also her thematic and emotional content. The Blake Babies were intelligent college rock, while her early solo work was both emotionally raw and confident. As she failed to break it really big, her music became tinged with a sense of bitterness, especially on her 2000 Beautiful Creatures and 2004’s In Exile Deo. Excellent albums that explore broken relationships and addiction, anger and no small amount of self-loathing.

But times change and her music continues to change along with it. Progressing through two more solo works and a published biography, she has reached 2010 at a different place in her life, and Peace and Love is clear evidence of this. Stripped down to a quiet and mostly acoustic sound, Hatfield is still unafraid of the intensity of her emotions, but is more accepting and willing to be heartfelt in their expression. Peace and Love is a minimalist collection of 12 songs that performs a very difficult task. These songs sing of love and heartbreak and loss without any sense of resentment or cynicism, instead showing a mature positivity and acceptance without falling into schmaltzy platitudes. She asks, “Why Can’t We Love Each Other� as an honest question, lacking any resignation. Even when she sings, “I’m Disappearing� with a fragile vulnerability, she is refusing to give in to any inevitable dissolution.

Peace and Love is just Juliana and her guitar or piano with minimal effects, pouring herself into a surprisingly inspirational record that is never pat or preaching. What might seem at first to be a darkly solitary album turns out to be subtly strong and affirming. Excellent work from a master songstress that should open new doors in an already amazing career. (Ye Olde Records 2010)

Juliana Hatfield MySpace page

This year has seen some extraordinary new music come our way. I’ve heard the opposite opinion from elsewhere, but for me, being on the West Coast has a lot to do with my enthusiasm. In fact, seven of the albums in my top ten are by West Coast artists, some more well-known than others. Not only that, three of the albums in my top ten aren’t albums at all. The “EP� is an anachronistic term that originally referred to a 7� vinyl record with more music crammed on each side (usually at the expense of volume and general sound quality) than what a normal single would hold. It’s an abbreviation for “Extended Play.� And yet, today’s EP is really just a half-length CD. They tend to be overlooked, either because they’re too short to warrant much attention or they contain songs not deemed strong enough for a full album, or both. But, like Bob Dylan said, “things have changed.� Our lives are busier, our attention spans are shorter, and our disposable income is shrinking by the hour. What better time for the EP to make a mini-resurgence than now?

1. The Parson Red Heads: Owl & Timber (EP)
There’s a timelessness to the sound and the vibe of the Parson Red Heads that’s beyond explanation. You can single out the familial harmonies, the guitar interplay that recalls the Byrds and the Dead, the irresistibly solid pop songs, or their flowery evocation of a bygone era. But when it comes down to it, this band’s music simply feels good. No other band has released music this irresistible and uplifting in years, and only a select lucky few up and down the West Coast have had the luxury of being able to see and hear them live. With a little luck, this may change, and we’ll be able to look back at Owl & Timber as one of the elements that made it happen.

2. Brian Wilson: That Lucky Old Sun
Following up the 37-years-late Smile with another similarly built song cycle seemed like little more than a fantasy in 2004. But here we are in 2008, and Brian Wilson pulled it off. Mike Love would be proud to hear that there’s only one “downer� on the album (the beautiful, Pet Sounds-worthy “Midnight’s Another Day�), while all the rest are upbeat, aural murals depicting the sunny side of Southern California. It’s Brian doing what he does best, and outside of Smile, it’s easily his best, most enjoyable solo work.

3. Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
Technically, Tell Tale Signs is an archival release, but the recent vintage of the material (1989 through 2006), the abundance of never-before-heard songs, and the fact that most of it was recorded during the same period in which Guns n’ Roses’ 14-years-late Chinese Democracy gestated, qualifies it as new. And even if it didn’t qualify, it would still be listed here, since it does as good a job (if not better) as any of his last three records of proving that, even in his old age, Dylan has lost none of his power to inspire, confound, delight and move his audience.

4. The Gutter Twins: Saturnalia
Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli have collaborated in the past on a few tracks from Greg’s Twilight Singers albums, and while those duets were pretty good, they were never major stand-outs. Not until the two covered Massive Attack’s “Live with Me� on last year’s A Stitch in Time EP, anyway. As good as that cover was, this full album of originals by Greg and Mark is even better. Dulli stretches himself here, eschewing his usual rockin’ R&B swagger and falling under Lanegan’s dark, spiritual influence.

5. Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights: Movie Theatre Haiku
That straight-laced dude from Portland with the Harry Nilsson fixation strikes again, this time crediting his road band and turning in an even more confident record than last year’s The Drunken Dance of Modern Man in Love. If the 1966 Beatles were a young band today, they’d likely be playing songs like Robley’s “User-Friendly Guide to Change.�

6. Joseph Arthur: Vagabond Skies (EP)
Of the four EPs and full-length album Joseph Arthur released this year, Vagabond Skies rises to the top not only for bearing some of his most captivating and ethereal songs, but also for containing the year’s most memorable guitar solo, in the EP’s centerpiece “She Paints Me Gold.� Plus, the cover art is damn cool.

7. The Happy Hollows: Imaginary (EP)
They’re funny, they’re smart, they’re tight as a conservative’s behind, and they’re the most exciting live indie rock band in L.A. right now. Imaginary is just a short burst of five songs, but what a burst it is – from the simple exclamatory chant of “Colors� to the almost prog-like tour-de-force of “Lieutenant� with singer/guitarist Sarah Negahdari’s Eddie Van Halen-esque guitar tapping, Imaginary tantalizes and teases, just like you want it to.

8. Guns n’ Roses: Chinese Democracy
Yes, it’s bloated and overproduced. No, it’s not the old, sleazy Guns n’ Roses of the late ‘80s. Yes, it should have been out ten years ago, and would have sounded even more contemporary in 1998 than in 2008. But Axl Rose is still the king of tortured, overwrought power ballads and menacing rock n’ roll screams, and on these counts, Chinese Democracy more than delivers – it beats you over the head with its twisted logic.

9. Metallica: Death Magnetic
Metallica sounds like Metallica again! It may be clichéd to say this is their best album since …And Justice for All, but it’s true, and it bears repeating: Death Magnetic is Metallica’s best album since Justice.

10. My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
Evil Urges goes to great lengths to prove that My Morning Jacket is no typical southern jam band. Not that they ever needed to go so far as to throw some Prince-like falsetto singing and funky R&B into the mix, but as it turns out, it sounds pretty cool.

The Fireman: Electric Arguments
Rachel Taylor Brown: Half Hours with the Lower Creatures
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
Portishead: Third
Neil Diamond: Home Before Dark
Juliana Hatfield: How to Walk Away
Randy Newman: Harps and Angels
Deerhoof: Offend Maggie
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan: Sunday at Devil Dirt

I count myself fortunate that, in my two decades as a journalist, I’ve had precious few interviews that were just really, really bad…although, for the record, whenever anyone asks me about my personal worst, however, I invariably cite a conversation that I had with Juliana Hatfield:

It started two hours later than I’d been told that it’d been scheduled, no-one had told her that it had been scheduled at all, and she clearly had no interest in talking to me at all, based on her general indifference to every question I had to offer and the constant stream of one-word answers that served as her responses. And to top it off, the most memorable part of the entire conversation – such as it was – came about only because I dared to close by asking the God-awful question, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be, and why?” Her horrified response: “I don’t want to be a tree!” (Okay, keep your cool, Juliana. It was hypothetical.)

Still, as excruciating as that experience was for me…and the fact that it occurred in 1992 and it’s still tops on my list speaks volumes as to the level of excruciation, I think…it still doesn’t come anywhere close to this:

Luke Burbank’s recent conversation with Sigur Ros.

Wow.

Luke, brother, I feel for you.