#21

I reckon if we did a poll of best artist of the last forty years, Nick would walk it for me. Tender Prey to Murder Ballads is as good a five album run as anyone has put together, and nothing after that is worse than very good. I just don’t think of him as a 2010s artist, is all.

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#22

Another visitor from the timeline where nocturama doesn’t exist! :grinning:

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#23

Never really got the hate for Nocturama. It’s certainly not peak Nick, but then I would say the same about Abattoir Blues / TLOO, which everyone seems to love. They are both treading water records for me - decent, competent stuff, but ultimately locked in a holding pattern that would have killed him as an artist if the Grinderman reboot hadn’t happened. I really don’t like The Boatman’s Call either, but at least he was doing something different and trying to change it up there.

#24

I agree with all of that, but I’m still going to find the likely Cave/Ocean semi quite tough. The Bad Seeds albums this decade have been utterly amazing, a late career run that has lifted Nick Cave into the realms of the proper immortals like Bowie, Dylan and Joni and laughing Leonard Cohen in my view.

And yet…Frank Ocean’s albums, especially Blonde, are absolutely of the moment and define the sound of so much of the most forward looking music of the decade.

It’ll be a match up that tests the idea of what it means to be an ‘artist of the decade’.

#25

Abattoir blues has plenty of lyrical and musical fire and invention. The story telling on lyre is up there with his very best and the choir vocals are pretty stunning throughout.

Nocturama does have lyrical and musical ambition but it’s all compressed into babe I’m on fire. The rest of it is bland as fuck imo

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#26

Polls will close in the morning and I’ll put the semis up.

#27

Fuck me,
image
Two albums, one in 2015 (!) and people are giving him artist of the decade over Big Thief?!

Where’s @Severed799 and his crew :smiley:

#28

Don’t even know what Syrian Stevens is

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#29

forgot about some of this non-album stuff to be fair (still enjoy All Delighted People more than Age of Adz actually) but i still think of him more as one of the definite artists of the 00s instead (same with Cave and the 80s/90s)

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#30

I’d argue that Everything Everything are the most important indie band of the last decade, but most people don’t know it or very vocally don’t want to hear it. They’re definitely the underdog vote in a Quarter Finals like this, I’m just immensely pleased they got here at all.

#31

Age of Adz is one of my favourite albums of the decade, so would be happy enough with that on its own. & the live show for that album was also astounding, and pretty much better than 99% of other shows I’ve seen since then.
The Planetarium (collaboration) album is really good also, and didn’t get the praise that it deserved.
(And not that fussed with Big Thief or any of the other artists remaining, so will be voting for him all the way. Give me an S! Give me a U! Give me an F! Give me a J! etc… Oops, wrong decade).

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#32

Semis are up here: