For me, the last ten years have been a decade defined by the increasing prominence of women. The music industry is still nowhere close to a zone of perfect equality, but it’s more open than it’s ever been. The result has been an explosion of new artists who don’t fit the old standards but whose music more than speaks for itself.
As always, this is a list of my favorites. I make no claim that these are objectively the best. They’re just the ones I liked the most.
Songs list here.
1. Japandroids – Celebration Rock (2012)
It leaps from the speakers like a thunderstorm raging through the sky. Each song is a bolt of lightning, crackling with intensity and piecing the dark sky. And, long after the initial strike, the reverberations rumble around you.
This record is perfect in the same way that stepping into a brisk night feels perfect after being trapped in a stuffy room. Or the way that a first kiss is perfect, even if you don’t end up spending your life with that person. It’s not about finding answers. It’s about struggling, and remembering what it feels like to laugh and love cry. What it feels like to be alive.
The centerpiece is The House That Heaven Built, which might genuinely be the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded. But Fire’s Highway is almost equally incandescent. Continuous Thunder rumbles in the deep. Adrenaline Nightshift delivers on its title in spades. The whole thing is only eight songs long, but every one a masterpiece.
It seems almost beside the point to call this the my favorite record of the decade. Celebration Rock brushes past the need for analysis or comparison. It just makes one simple request: listen, and love.
2. Grimes – Art Angels (2015)
Tour de force doesn’t even begin to describe this record. This is the work of a genius, at the peak of her powers, flexing her muscles and discovering that the laws of physics no longer constrain her. Anything is possible in her hands, from bold and bright pop (California) to the jagged edges of a concealed blade (Kill V. Maim) to a moment of pure and unadulterated beauty (the Realiti demo). Or, rather than dabbling, why not mix it all together into a singular creation: the perfect dance track, which sings to us through the dimensions, and speaks of potential as yet beyond the reach of our philosophy (Flesh Without Blood). In an era where ‘pop’ and ‘art’ and ‘rock’ find themselves enmeshed in a Stately Quadrille, Grimes rises like a Colossus above the shifting terms and phrases of engagement, looking down with disdain upon those who waste their time fighting about authenticity and facsimile. Whatever music is, or should be, it’s here.
3. Jason Isbell – Southeastern (2013)
Honest, heart-wrenching, desolate, beautiful, bleak. Hopeful. This record is the living document of a man coming face to face with his demons and triumphing. But that triumph is only found at the very edges, hard-won, and even harder to sustain. The context is Isbell’s struggle to get sober. But the record’s genius comes partly from Isbell’s recognition that if he wanted to tell the true story, it could only be done obliquely. The characters in his stories certainly serve allegorical functions, but the connection is never explicitly made. The songs don’t stand for particular emotions, or particular struggles. Instead, they reflect attitudes, values, fears. They’re perspectives, which illuminate faces of a life that can never be grasped in its totality.
One relative constant is that all of these people are constantly on the move, on frontiers, at the margins of society. In many cases the plot details are left completely unfilled. All we know is that standing still somehow means giving up. Rather than filling in the plot details or etching a backstory, we zoom in close on specific details. Some of the albums most powerful moments come from little fragments of conversations, the sorts of things that haunt your memory long after the details are lost.
And finally, it all comes back to this: Southeastern is more than anything else an album about love. It’s about the person who finally pushed him into action, the person who was finally worth doing it for. The hardest part of getting help can often be accepting that you are not in control – that as much as your actions seem to be intentional and directed, somehow you’ve lost sight of your true self. This is a terrifying proposition. But maybe, just maybe, getting better doesn’t have to mean running from who you once were. Maybe it just means finding a way to stop running, at least for a little while. If we’re lucky, we still can find ourselves – and share that self with someone who loves us. And tomorrow, we have to try again. And the next day. And the next.
4. The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (2014)
This record single-handedly proves that rock and roll is still a vibrant genre, capable of telling us important things about who we are and who we might become. Combine Highway 61 era Dylan with the mid-80s Springsteen, mix in some Love Over Gold era Dire Straits, bring in the Heartbreakers as a backing band, and have Bryan Ferry produce the thing, and you’ll start to get the idea of what’s going on here. But in spite of all those references, Lost in the Dream never sounds even remotely dated. Adam Granduciel has somehow achieved the impossible: an album swimming in classic rock references that feels intensely specific to this decade.
5. Charly Bliss – Young Enough (2019)
This record is a bildungsroman for the ages. It’s about the little spaces that reside in between moments of transition. The feeling of no longer being young but still not being an adult. The sense of vertigo that you feel in between the decision to end a bad relationship and actually working up the willpower to do it. The indescribable pain of having been hurt but lacking the vocabulary to define how it was done. And it’s all wrapped up in a glorious bow of new wave synths and fuzzy guitar lines.
Guppy was a very nice record, but one that didn’t necessarily stick with me. Young Enough delivers on every promise from their first effort, and then some. These songs are glimmer like fireflies as they dance and weave around you. From the stately march of Blown to Bits to the pedal-to-the-metal acceleration of Under You to the bubblegum trauma of Chatroom to the beautifully pure finale The Truth. But at the center of it all is the title track, one of the most cathartic songs ever produced.
6. Camp Cope – How to Socialise & Make Friends (2018)
A bracing record, which details the burdens of living in a world that treats women’s bodies as commodities, to be used and discarded at whim. A world which cares deeply about appearing to be fair and just, but which lashes out with violence when you dare to ask when things are actually ever going to get better. A world in which the simple joys are enough to keep you afloat, no matter how much it all hurts.
Wittgenstein famously said “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Camp Cope offers an alternative. Where one cannot speak, one must sing. And if you can find a couple friends to pound out a few bass riffs along the way, all the better.
7. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell (2015)
There really isn’t much to say about Sufjan that hasn’t already been said, to be honest. Back in my very first post on this blog (almost 15 years ago!), I referred to his music as ‘devastating beautiful’ and this album does nothing to dissuade me of that opinion. In many ways, it’s the perfect condensation of what he’s offered us over the years. As delicate as Seven Swans, as emotional as Michigan, as exquisite as Illinois, as adventurous as Adz. But the feelings. Oh, the feelings.
Did you get enough love, my little dove
Why do you cry?
And I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best
Though it never felt right
My little Versailles
What else could I possibly add?
8. Grouper – The Man Who Died in His Boat (2013)
Liz Harris gives voice to the deep structures of the universe: its vastness, the empty reaches of space. But also its material resonances: the living and breathing impossibility of life. These songs are hazy windows into an alternate reality where humans never left the savannahs and the rest of the world continued on its own. Her words are indistinct, unknowable, sinking below the surface even before they are sung. They ask you to listen for the gaps in that which seems whole. The point is not to attack the false precision of modernity, but simply reflect it back upon itself. In doing so we become aware of the endless waves of uncertainty and doubt that lie beneath them.
If this all sounds too abstract or distant, it is absolutely not. These are some of the most emotionally present songs you are ever likely to hear. They speak of loneliness and deep longing. The hiss of the tape, the ethereality of a human voice, the blurrily plucked guitar notes, the background vibrations of atoms singing, all of these things live together here in a kind of discordant harmony so beautiful that I can’t ever hope to describe it.
9. Hamilton – Original Cast Recording (2015)
It took me awhile to truly fall in love with Hamilton, but it’s one of the records I’ve gone back to the most in the past five years. And every single listen reveals something new. A turn of phrase, a motivation, a reference. The story of Hamilton’s career–the surrounding political climate, the competing passions which drive him to success and to ruin–is fascinating in its own right. But it’s given far more depth and emotion by unifying the personal and political. It brings the Founding generation to life in a way that was entirely unexpected, but feels inevitable once you’ve heard it.
10. Westkust – Westkust (2019)
This album is big, messy, glorious, raucous. It’s everything you ever wanted from a shoegaze record and everything you ever wanted from a punk record combined together into something that exceeds all of its parts. Rampaging guitars, thumping drums, a rising wave of sound that peaks and then cascades down like a river pouring over the edge of a cliff. As you hang suspended within this waterfall, singer Julia Bjernelind’s voice bursts forth like the midday sun, casting a rainbow all around you.
11. Mimi Page – The Ethereal Blues (2015)
Orchestral sweeps, trip-hop beats, lyrics that speak of a deep well of sadness, but which elevate rather than weigh down. I hear tinges of Enya, of Massive Attack, of Goldfrapp, of Morcheeba. The closest reference, though, has to be the early Tori Amos. It’s deep, immaculately produced, full of rich sensations, textures, and melodies as uncanny as they are gorgeous. It’s also truly an album to be experienced in totality. For all the wondrous beauty of the individual components, the true genius is in the careful layering of possibilities from song to song. With each new essay, fresh angles are revealed, more possibilities uncovered. One track is mesmerizingly beautiful, spare, delicate: an invitation. The next brings tension, apprehensiveness, even fear. And then the senses twine together, introducing a spirit of disquiet, and then an invitation to resolution. The process is dialectical: endlessly provocative, eternally haunting. Each time I return, it begins again, and I find new reasons to love it.
12. Dirty Diamonds – Monster Ballads (2010)
This record burst out of nowhere, and immediately grabbed my heart. The Dirty Diamonds put out a few more singles but then disappeared without a trace. And so we’re left with little more than this single EP–six soul songs in the tradition of the best girl groups of the 1960s, mixed with a dash of punk spirit and some hints of electro dance pop. It’s a time-tested brew, but seldom accomplished with this sort of skill or aplomb. Harmonies that soar and dip, insistent tambourine-driven beat, great pulsating bass lines, and a looseness that makes everything sound fresh beyond words. It’s light and so free that your heart almost wants to burst. It’s not complex. It’s not sophisticated. It doesn’t take on any difficult concepts or themes. But it makes me ridiculously, ludicrously happy. And what more can you ask for?
13. Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life (2017)
It was inevitable that the followup to Celebration Rock would disappoint a bit. So it’s no surprise that this one left me a little bit cold when I first heard it. But as time has passed, I’ve found myself returning to it more and more. And I’ve discovered gems that originally passed me by. Like its predecessor, this is a joyful record. But they’ve traded in a bit of the youthful bombast and replaced it with a more measured sense of attention. Sure, there is something lost in the change. But there is also something gained: a looseness and easiness that comes with age and experience. More than anything, to me it sounds like an ode to the great midwest bar rock bands of the 80s: Husker Du and The Replacements, and the like. It’s not Celebration Rock, but it’s still a damn good rock and roll record.
14. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
This record strikes me as the key inflection point in the career of Kanye West. It’s the moment when his immense musical talent and work ethic smashed headfirst into his neuroses and ego, producing a record for the ages in the process. It’s audacious, intricate, intimate, dangerous, ridiculous, amazing. Just about any superlative you can come up with will apply to this record–and not just the positive ones. It’s full of mistakes, weird missteps, awkward phrases and bizarre musical turns. He’s terribly off-key in a number of places, his flow is good but nothing special, there are plenty of lines that fall flat. And yet, somehow, none of this matters.
This is a record that lays bare with exquisite detail the deepest parts of our souls, the parts that want to destroy the things that we love, that don’t know how to accept good things. The self-hatred that manifests itself in aggressive self-promotion, the desperation that makes us shrug off the pain. There’s an intense sadness, a plaintive honesty, and an inescapable fear.
15. Camera Obscura – Desire Lines (2013)
It’s soft, relaxed, and cozy, like your favorite hoodie that you throw on to keep you happy on a chilly day. The sort of music you play on a warm summer morning to keep you company while you garden. It’s certainly not empty of content – there is a deep strain of melancholy that runs through the record – but it’s fundamentally an empathic work. We have it in ourselves to be great, it says, but before we can try we must first be good.
For the most part, the record moves from fast-paced jangle-pop to slower tracks tinged with just a bit of doo-wop and soul. Of the former, the clear highlight is Troublemaker which jingles and jangles its way right into your heart, and features that great Tracyanne Campbell voice. It’s one of their best tracks to date, a genuine little pop masterpiece. Of the slower tracks, This is Love (Feels Alright) blends a measured and ever so slightly ornate pace with slight vocal swoops to fine effect, while New Year’s Resolution is delightfully wistful and Desire Lines builds off a nicely understated country vibe – with Campbell’s voice providing a lovely counterpoint to the slide guitar.
This isn’t a record that will blow you away, but it’s all the better for not trying to do so. What you get is pretty simple: 13 great songs, no missteps, no wasted space. Nothing but gorgeous music.
16. Beirut – The Rip Tide (2011)
I haven’t always loved Zach Congdon’s music, largely because it often feels a little bit affected. But on The Rip Tide, he struck gold. This is a record built with intense care, but which never feels the slightest bit precious or posed. It’s a devotional to the world itself. Across its nine songs, you are granted access to a world more beautiful, more pure, more free than our own. The subject is solitude, of camaraderie, of loss, and the things we eventually find to replace the irreplaceable. It is the remembrances of past loves.
Each song is perfectly balanced, from the quiet and reflective Goshen to the enthusiastic gait of Vagabond to the silky smooth waves of The Rip Tide. However, A Candle’s Fire is the tour de force. It is the sound of the rising sun burning the horizon red and gold. The horns are warm, full of vitality and care. And they receive a perfect counterpoint in Congdon’s voice, which is rich and smoky.
At just 33 minutes, this record comes and goes before you know it. The only recourse is to return to the beginning and let it play again, and again.
17. Jon Hopkins – Immunity (2013)
A stunning array of different sound textures, beats, and emotional registers. The glitchy “Open Eye Signal” invites frantic dancing, while “Breathe This Air” is far more seductive – melding together a throbbing beat with the delicate application of single piano strikes. However, the true emotional core of this album is on the softer pieces. Of those, “Abandon Window” is an exercise in restraint – built around the sparest of piano notes and an ever-so-gently rising wave of supporting harmonics. It’s about as pure and beautiful of a song as you can imagine.
And yet, it still can’t possibly compare to the incredible, impossible perfection of the title track. At just under 10 minutes long, and with no dramatic flourishes or moments of release, there is nothing here to suck you in directly. But as it slowly unfolds, you feel the whole world drawing closer, and every line of consciousness beginning to blur. For me, the experience is encapsulated in the line from Milan Kundera: “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
18. Taylor Swift – 1989 (2014)
There’s something to be said for an intricately crafted pop song. And that something is ‘yes, please.’ This record is stuffed full of great verses, catchy choruses, pleasingly oblique bridges. The production levels are through the roof. And if a few of the lines are a bit clunky, that’s just part of the charm.
19. Frightened Rabbit – Pedestrian Verse (2013)
Frightened Rabbit spent most of the last decade as my favorite band on the planet. They didn’t release a single life-changing record like 2008’s Midnight Organ Fight, but they did produce three records that could each easily have made this list. In the end, this one just managed to be my favorite. It’s probably the most sophisticated record they ever released. Where much of their music was defined by sadness, self-loathing, or pain, this one is unique for communicating a certain degree of violence. But it’s violence for a purpose. If Midnight Organ Fight was a record about the intense subjectivity of pain–the way that it feels utterly unique and impossible to share–this album is far more about anger, the painful struggle of coming to terms with all the ways that we can never quite be the best version of ourselves. And that feeling, for all its intense sadness, invites a degree of empathy. As you struggle to find a place in the world, you can’t help but realize that everyone else is doing the same thing.
The result is an album about social pain, as opposed to an album about emotional pain. It’s cathartic – not in the sense of offering release from the demons that trouble us, but in the way that it lets us perceive things in a new light. It’s less rending, but tremendously heartening nonetheless.
RIP, Scott.
20. The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding (2017)
While this one isn’t (quite) as mind-blowing as Lost in the Dream, it’s still one of the best of the decade. The synths are a bit overbearing in places, and the production is just a bit too airy for my tastes. But there is no denying these songs. Propulsive, introspective, joyous, weathered.
21. Cloud Nothings – Here and Nowhere Else (2014)
Rock and roll doesn’t demand that you say something new. It just demands that you say it with passion. Well, this record has passion. The melodies are tight, the drums thunder, the guitars lift you up and send you tumbling. From the first note, it snarls and bites and doesn’t give you a moment to think.
22. Allo Darlin’ – Europe (2012)
Absolutely pitch-perfect jangle pop. There is no artifice; just the simple joy of being alive in a world with such beautiful music. “You haven’t felt this way since 1998” they sing on the title track, and that’s exactly right. This is the greatest record that Sarah Records never got a chance to give us. Or, alternatively, this is the record I have desperately been hoping that Camera Obscura might produce. But more than anything else, it’s music to fall in love to.
23. Vanessa Peters – The Burden of Unshakeable Proof (2016)
Another wonderful record from one of my favorite artists of the millennium. As always, there’s a timelessness to her music – one of those things that seems easy but is actually incredibly difficult to pull off. Turn on any ‘adult contemporary radio station’ and you’ll get endless attempts at this sort of timelessness, all of which do nothing more than evoke nostalgia for the ever-receding present. It’s a grim business.
But The Burden of Unshakeable Proof is completely different. Its defining feature is a deep sense of connection between past, present, and future. A recognition that we are, all of us, struggling to make sense of a perpetually moving horizon – constrained by the choices of our past selves, full of anxiety about the what may yet come. These songs reside in that liminal state between the two: the bright flickering present, weighted down by the obligations of past and future and yet still struggling to be free.
And that makes it the absolutely perfect record for a tough time in the world. As our politics feel so relentlessly grim, I’ve very much appreciated having this album by my side. It’s an important reminder that there is always beauty in this world, if we can just manage to find it.
24. Grimes – Visions (2012)
The breakout record from one of the most fascinating artists of the decade. It’s DIY electronica with dreamy pop movements and vocals that sound like they are being sung through a wormhole from Alpha Centauri. Her genius is to mash together bits and pieces from a wide range of genres, and in doing so create something that feels miles away from any of its reference points. Visions is to pop music as Cubism was to the world of linear perspective painting.
25. Pistol Annies – Interstate Gospel (2018)
Interstate Gospel feels like a careening Thelma & Louise ride through the countryside. Its central theme: the world has done us wrong, and we have kept receipts. But don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything really bad. Probably.
And while they’re polishing their pistols and considering just what sort of story this is going to end up being, they’ll take some time to reflect on how everything got so thoroughly fucked up. The answer isn’t simple. It’s a whole constellation of forces, which convince a woman to settle so often that she never quite realizes every important piece has been eaten way. Until, eventually, you look around and realize: “I’m in the middle of the worst of it / These are the best years of my life.”
Honorable Mentions:
Miranda Lambert – The Weight of These Wings (2016)
The National – Trouble Will Find Me (2013)
Frightened Rabbit – Painting of a Panic Attack (2016)
Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger in the Alps (2017)
Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour (2018)
Haley Bonar – Last War (2014)
I Break Horses – Hearts (2011)
Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball (2012)
Okkervil River – The Silver Gymnasium (2013)
Sleater Kinney – No Cities to Love (2015)