Naturally, this dude is involved

​Distilling a full year of furtive, easily distracted, constantly overwhelmed listening down to a mere 10 albums is a ridiculous, agonizing, thoroughly loathsome undertaking, and yet here we all are, pulling nine fully formed sonic universes together and capping it off with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, because that's what we all did in 2010. Try Warpaint's morose "Undertow" when you want to feel sorry for yourself, Sleigh Bells' spectacularly violent "Straight A's" when you want to feel sorry for whoever you're about to punch in the face, and the morosely spectacular "Runaway" when you want to feel sorry for, well, Kanye. This was my year, with all the distractions finally, mercifully filtered out.

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Emily Kokal (right) and Jenny Lee Lindberg, pulling you off the floor. Pics by Santiago Felipe, more below.

​Warpaint
Webster Hall
Wednesday, December 1

Better Than: Another night trapped in a space the width of your headphones, that's for sure.

Warpaint live is a disconcerting experience. They're smiling! The bass player is dancing (and wearing overalls)! People in the crowd are dancing! There's a crowd at all! You're not alone in your bedroom, curled up in the fetal position, bawling uncontrollably! The all-female L.A. quartet generally seems built for solitude -- for abject 4 a.m. dark-night-of-the-soul solo wallowing. Their stupendous debut full-length, The Fool, triangulates Moon Pix-era Cat Power's ghostly, morbid, gorgeous bedroom folk with the Slits' lithe, muscular post-punk, but the latter style dominates onstage, thanks mostly to drummer Stella Mozgawa, a dervish of brash snare cracks, liquid drum rolls, emphatic soundman-hailing gestures, and rampant giggling. Everybody uncurl, stop bawling, and get ahold of yourselves.

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