Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. This is a compilation of 2010's best local music, lovingly curated by YIMBY columnist Christopher R. Weingarten. See last year's tape here.

R.I.P. Chris Weingarten's old blue trucker hat. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

Have you heard the one about how the recession is over? Uh, don't tell it to New York City's musical community. While our center-of-the-universe assembly line of hype puttered on unabated, 2010's biggest up-and-comer success stories were actually beamed from the outer limits of the five boroughs--Titus Andronicus (Glen Rock, NJ), Screaming Females (New Brunswick, NJ), Phantogram (Saratoga Springs, NY), Real Estate (Ridgewood, NJ)--places where money can go to tour vans instead of landlords, where musicians aren't paying $400 a month for the luxury of sharing a practice space with three other bands. The remaining New York City indie-crossovers all benefited from frugal one-man home-recording set-ups (Oneohtrix Point Never, Matthew Dear), stripped down line-ups (the Drums, Sleigh Bells, Matt & Kim) or simply embracing the idea that sounding mushy is smarter than buying new gear (Small Black).

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Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Astoria duo Austerity Program take the lunging acrimony of classic pigfuck and subvert it through the evil scrunch of modern extreme metal. They've always sounded a little like Big Black--what with the whole adenoidal howling/abrasive guitar/drum machine thing--but new EP Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn (out May 4 on Hydra Head) brings their Albini worship to its most mature, focused and disturbing end point. Backsliders's four songs, all about five minutes long, are sardonic hateballs, raging like tortured animals conquering the endless drone of existence. Second track "Song 26"--which you can download below--is like Shellac's "Prayer To God" if the sex-starved protagonist actually had a closer relationship to Jesus than women.

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