- Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
- The Wrens - The Meadowlands
- 65daysofstatic - The Fall of Math
- Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
- Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
- Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me (sorry)
- Outkast - Stankonia
- Mos Def - The Ecstatic
- Frank Ocean - Blonde
- Why? - Elephant Eyelash
- 65daysofstatic - Wild Light
- Noname - Telefone
- Young Fathers - Tape One &Two
- The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
- Little Brother - The Listening
- Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreaks
- Electric President - Self Titled
- The Hotelier - Home Like Noplace Is There
- Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost
- Muse - Origin of Symmetry
Some self-indulgent blurb, some of which is C&Pd from the Albums of the Decade thread
1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Probably a strong case for this gatecrashing my favourite album of all time tbh. An unbelievably rich, complex piece of work that is immensely personal but also a far-reaching social commentary. It’s a showcase for one of the greatest technical rappers of all time but over beats that offer him a framework to experiment with his delivery in a less constricted way than a lot of “rap beats” ordinarily would. It’s a fucking masterpiece.
2. The Wrens - The Meadowlands
I was introduced to this album by the first girl I fell in love with who was from the same town as the band in New Jersey and who I dropped out of uni to pursue an ill-fated long-distance relationship with after we had an “affair” whilst she was living in London. It is impossible for me to separate my feelings for the album from the sentimentality of living through all that at an absurdly formative period of my life. However, I think that, regardless of all that, it’s my favourite “guitar band” album by a very long distance. There is so much going on in every track with layers and layers of different lead melodies overlapping with each other and crescendoing absolutely perfectly. The band themselves are extremely lovely human beings as well which helps. Yeah, this is a very special and important album to me.
3. 65daysofstatic - The Fall of Math
When I first heard this band it made me no longer want to make or play music because there was already a band that was making music that sounded exactly like what my idea of the music I’d want to make was. Since that point they have been by far and away my favourite band of all time. Every album grows and hits in a different way but their debut is still the most visceral for me as it was just exactly what I wanted to be hearing. I love them so fucking much, their new album is out next week and they’re one of the few remaining artists that this gives me a teenage amount of excitement for. I’ve seen them more than any other band and I love them more than any other band.
4. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The most compelling person of our generation and (probably) his most compelling piece of work. An album that seems to sound like him coming to terms with his flaws as a human being but working through them in the most absurdly egotistical way possible. Full of absolute bangers on a surface level but all of them contribute to an overall arc for the record despite working on their own as well.
5. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
Was gonna try and restrict myself to a one album per artist rule but would have been stupid to leave this off. It’s the best autobiography I’ve ever read and the best biopic I’ve ever seen but it’s something I’ve only actually listened to. It’s amazing how evocative it is.
6. Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me (sorry)
Yeah, fuck Jesse Lacey. Sorry for picking this but it would be completely disingenuous of me to try and pretend that this band and this album weren’t hugely important to me for the vast majority of this century. Can’t imagine myself ever wanting to listen to it again though and I find that devastating.
7. Outkast - Stankonia
The group that showed me how creative hip-hop could be. Not my favourite of theirs by a long way but even then it still makes it comfortable one of the best of the century. Gasoline Dreams > So Fresh, So Clean, Ms Jackson is a pretty untouchable opening run of tracks on an album.
8. Mos Def - The Ecstatic
A stunningly eclectic, jet-hopping stream-of-consciousness of a record that is so much fun to settle into and go with. It’s full of “moments” as opposed to individual tracks to fall in love with and that’s why I’m so into it. Every time you listen to it there’s something else that you had forgotten about or hadn’t locked into before that excites you. I wish he was more prolific but maybe it’s more special because he’s not.
9. Frank Ocean - Blonde
A testament to how much better albums that grow on you are to ones that you love immediately. This did nothing for me for the first few times I heard it and then I just decided it wasn’t for me. When the Dissect podcast announced they were doing a season on it I went back and listened just to see what it was I was missing and for whatever reason I fell in love with it just in time for the podcast to go track-by-track and highlight how much depth there is to the whole thing. It’s fucking incredible to think how completely it failed to hold my attention to start with but how compelling I find it now.
10. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
For a while there I was completely obsessed with Why? This and Alopecia and to a lesser extent Eskimo Snow are all masterpieces but I think I’ve landed on the fact that Elephant Eyelash is my favourite. My obsession was all about the lyrics and very little to do with the music and this is very, very unlike me but yeah. He’s a very special lyricist IMO.
11. 65daysofstatic - Wild Light
They’re my very favourite band and this record feels like everything I’ve loved about every era of them but combined into one album. The closing salvo three tracks are their absolute peak I think. I love them so fucking much.
12. Noname - Telefone
She makes words flow together like water being poured or something. Usually I’m all about rappers being in the pocket and the rhymes hitting at the same point as the drums and all that but this just washes over me in such a gorgeous way. Probably one of the voices (in every sense) I’m most excited to hear for the next decade as well.
13. Young Fathers - Tape One & Two
Might be a bit of a cheat but it got released as a combined vinyl at some point this decade so I’m having it. Young Fathers are gonna go down as the last “new band” that I’ll ever fall in love with. You get disillusioned with new music when you head towards your thirties as everything sounds like something you’ve already heard (and doesn’t match the love you have for the stuff you already love) or it sounds like they’re trying too hard to do something different. Young Fathers sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard before or have heard since. They’re the best live act in the country as far as I’m concerned and any one of their releases could have appeared in my list. Went with these tapes as they were the ones that caused the excitement for me.
14. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
I have no idea how I love this band when that vocal is so obviously irritating. I think it’s mainly to do with the drummer though who is absolutely fucking ridiculously talented. I’ve increasingly settled into the fact that the common factor with the vast majority of music I love is percussion and that, boring drumwork = boring music to me. This album is probably the most overt example of that because I shouldn’t like the band but I love their first two albums.
15. Little Brother - The Listening
I think this is just everything I love about hip-hop in it’s most packaged together format for me or something? Rappers in the pocket over really fucking solid beats made up of soul samples and boom-bap. There are acts I love more and there are probably albums I love more as well but this album is the equivalent of settling in to a comfy armchair to me. Familiar and comforting.
16. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreaks
The world’s biggest rap star, takes the genre to a whole new level of superstardom, becomes one of the most famous and controversial people on the planet. Loses his Mum to a botched cosmetic surgery that his new-found superstardom facilitated, suffers a break-up of his long term relationship and responds with a record that completely throws out everything that made people fall in love with him. It’s dark and depressing and moody, there’s basically no rapping on it, the autotune renders it unlistenable for vast swathes of people but it’s a fucking masterpiece and is probably the most influential album of the century in terms of it’s impact on popular music. It’s so fucking fascinating and so fucking good.
17. Electric President - Self Titled
Ben Cooper has been quietly churning out really great stuff in loads of different genres for a long time now. I think this record is my favourite thing he’s done (although Radical Face - Ghost would be up there as well). It’s like the Postal Service album everyone loves but better.
18. The Hotelier - Home Like Noplace Is There
Nostalgia for a new record was an odd feeling. Basically this album made me feel like a teen again in the best possible way. Losing Brand New was fucking devastating, the fact that this album exists kind of makes it easier.
19. Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost
Kind of a bit “as above” but in a different way. Not sure what it is that makes this album work for me when so much of it would just irritate me on paper (especially those nasaly vocals) but it’s so fucking good. One of those rare albums that forces you to listen to it again the moment it’s finished. “We still leave our shoes at the door, before we wring out our wet clothes across your floor and future, stitch the gaps that destiny eschewed, with floral sutures, are you hiding or have I abandoned you?” is probably my favourite bit of a guitar based song of the decade.
20. Muse - Origin of Symmetry
Fuck it. I haven’t listened to it or them for years now but it would be completely disingenuous of me to pretend that they weren’t the biggest thing in music for me at my most formative years. Think I saw them 12 times over the mid section of the century. I maintain that their live shows are some of the most fun you can have at a gig. Their tongue is firmly in their cheek as far as I’m concerned and I don’t care how embarrassing they are now, they were fun at the point of my life where having fun was important to me.