Heartache With Hard Work

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)

It’s fashionable to complain about the state of contemporary music these days (though really, when has declinism not been in vogue?), and there are some reasons to be a little bit down on what manages to rise to the top of the charts. But this really has been a glorious decade for music, in every genre and at every register. The democratization of production and consumption certainly hasn’t been an unadulterated good, but it has at least ensured that the long tail of artistic production is now truly available to the world at large. And that has made things incredible for consumers.

For artists, the story is more mixed. The commodities are widely available but compensation generally doesn’t follow. So I encourage everyone to treat list-making season as an opportunity to find some new things to love, and then go buy them. Or go to shows. Or buy merch. Something to put money into the pockets of these wonderful artists who enrich our lives.

For me, constructing this list was a real journey. My initial longlist ran to about 400 songs, and it was excruciating to narrow it down to just 50. But it was also a joyous process to go back and give each little gem another close look. These songs are etched deep inside me, and it’s wonderful to have an excuse to dig down and think seriously about what makes them each so good.

As always, these are just my favorites. I make no claim that they’re objectively the best.

1. The House That Heaven Built – Japandroids (2012)

To me, this is the greatest rock and roll song of all time. The drums are insistent, marching along with implacable resolve. There is a single stomping beat that drives everything forward faster and faster. And then there is a backbeat, the clashing of cymbals, and the ever-rising sense of explosive potential. This is a song to build empires around.

2. Realiti (demo) – Grimes (2015)

Her voice is ethereal as she weaves her way through a woozy forest of synths and tightly clipped percussive lines. It feels otherworldly, but also strangely familiar, like stepping inside a Van Gogh. The title is fitting, since this song–more than any other I have ever heard–communicates the strangely madness that comes from grasping the world in its unadulterated form. If it feels unreal, it’s only because our whole lives are spent building the artifice that encloses us.

3. Fire’s Highway – Japandroids (2012)

This song hits like a semi-truck, and burns with the unquenchable fire of youth. To spend even one moment filled with this sort of passion is to know what it truly means to be alive.

4. Emmylou – First Aid Kit (2012)

It’s an ode to love, companionship, partnership, and a long history of music. Their voices dance around each other, the guitar sliding around them without the tiniest bit of friction. And it’s all tied together by one of the greatest choruses in musical history—made all the better by those couple dipping notes on the guitar that immediately precede it.

5. Young Enough – Charly Bliss (2019)

Threaded tightly around a single chord guitar line, it builds and builds, until it feels like there is nothing left in the world except this song. One purpose of music is to communicate something fundamental about the human experience. On that count, I’m not sure it’s possible to succeed more completely than Charly Bliss did here.

6. Alabama Pines – Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit (2011)

A work of pure pathos from one of the finest songwriters on the planet. It’s achingly sad: a perfect encapsulation of a disenchanted Southern spirit, of dead-end dreams and a weariness with the world. His voice on the chorus brings me to my knees every time I hear it.

7. Silent Treatment – The Joy Formidable (2013)

If you went into a laboratory to design a song for me, you could hardly do better than this. A gorgeous double-tracked voice, backed by a delicate acoustic pluck, rising up and then falling around a single note…that’s what it takes to make my heart sing.

8. Black Synagogue – Angel Haze (2014)

At her best, Angel Haze is probably my favorite rapper in the world. And this is very much her best. “Black Synagogue” is full of rage and empathy and she spits it all out at 150 MPH.

9. We Found Love – Rihanna (2011)

Pop music is designed to be ephemeral. Even the best of it often fades away quickly. It’s the rare gem that not only lasts but gets better and better with time. We Found Love is such a gem. Its hopefulness and beauty have transcended the momentary and become universal. People will still be dancing to this song a hundred years from now.

10. Continuous Thunder – Japandroids (2012)

The album-closer on a rock and roll masterpiece, it has the impossible task of seeing the act off the stage. It does so by condensing everything down to one glorious question: “Would we love with a legendary fire?” The guitars swirl around and build, and build, and build. And finally, there really is nothing but continuous thunder.

11. Flesh without Blood – Grimes (2015)

In my book, Grimes was the most interesting artist of the last ten years. And this song really illustrates why. Just a couple years removed from the glitchy bedroom electro-beats of Visions and the wispy metronome clicks and murmurs of Halfaxa, Grimes released maybe the best banger of the whole decade. Every piece is in perfect balance, from the propulsive beat to the confident vocals to the buzzing bass.

12. When the Master Calls the Roll – Rosanne Cash (2014)

This is a song you could spend an entire lifetime hoping to write. Beautiful, expansive, heartbreaking, honest. I’m not sure it could have come from anyone but Rosanne Cash.

13. Yulia – Wolf Parade (2010)

The madness of the endless cosmos, the realization that you have already passed beyond the veil even as you still drift alone in the dark reaches of spaces – and that there is only one person far behind who will think of you. All tinged with a sense of awe to simply be out there. What a horrible, wonderful, deeply sad way to die…

14. Genesis – Grimes (2012)

I have no idea what on earth she is singing in this song, and I never want to find out.

15. Julian – Say Lou Lou (2013)

The harmonies are exquisite. It’s got the lush production that has characterized Swedish indie pop for the last decade, married to the atmospherics of classic Fleetwood Mac. It’s a heady combination – the sort of song you can listen to on repeat for hours.

16. C&F – Antarctica Takes It! (2010)

It’s a skittering song, rushing along breathlessly and begging you to try and keep up. It’s one of those tracks that has so many brilliant moments you can hardly believe that it’s only three minutes long. It’s like they’ve packed several years worth of pent-up ideas into one brilliant explosion. It’s got a lot of that 60s era vim and vigor, with words that seem to stumble over themselves with how eager they are to get out into the bright spring sun.

17. Sleepwalker – Julie Byrne (2017)

A song so pure and true that it makes my heart burst. To listen is an act of devotion. Whatever darkness may come, there is still light. And, maybe, the hope of solace for those in pain.

18. No Way Outro – I Break Horses (2011)

The last two minutes of this song are epic, but the thing that absolutely kills me is those two little bass notes that seem to trigger the tidal wave.

19. Graceless – The National (2013)

Berninger’s distinctively smoky voice, the tightly wound guitar lines, and above all that insistent drumming. And when it all comes together, it is sheer perfection. The final minute or so is absolutely, relentlessly good.

20. Elephant – Jason Isbell (2013)

A terrible, sad, heartbreaking song. And a strangely hopeful one. Because look: the girl is still going to die. All the kindness in the world can’t give her death any more dignity. Neither can love. After all, her family loves her, but she is still dying alone. What he can offer, maybe, is a kind of temporary solace in the loss of memory. He gives her the chance to forget what she is now and remember who she really is. Is that enough? We may never know. But we have to try anyways.

21. Immunity – Jon Hopkins (2013)

As it slowly unfolds you can sense the passing of years, perhaps even of lifetimes. A simple piano line establishes the structure of the song. But the true soul is doled out through the indecipherable chorus sung by King Creosote, whose voice perfectly clarifies the otherworldliness of the experience.

22. All of These Years – Vanessa Peters (2016)

There is no song in the entire decade that made me smile more than this one.

23. Only A Clown – Caitlin Rose (2013)

The alchemy of the verse and chorus – I’m sure there are technical explanations for why it works the way that it does, but I don’t know what they are. All I know is that I’m glad to live in a world where it exists.

24. Howl – The Gaslight Anthem (2012)

A sort of postscript to Thunder Road. Once again, there’s a girl whose dress waves and a guy with a car offering to take her away. But this Mary said ‘no’ to the first offer. She stuck around, went to school, and made a life for herself. And now our hero is back, because the one thing that never dies is hope. And when he sings “I waited on your call and made my plans to share my name” there’s nothing you can do but hope along with him.

25. Motion Sickness – Phoebe Bridgers (2017)

This song is so clever and bright that you almost miss how tightly constructed it is. Phoebe Bridgers has penned quite a few great songs in her young career already, but this is the best. And “I have emotional motion sickness” is one of the all-time great lines in music.

26. Meredith & Iris – Carissa’s Weird (2011)

A one-off project from Carissa’s Wierd, who reunited to release a single almost a decade after their last performances. It was a bolt of light in a long night, like Van Gogh returning from the dead, carrying a painting of heaven itself.

27. Should Have Known Better – Sufjan Stevens (2015)

It begins quiet and withdrawn, spare and beautiful. Then, on a perfect hinge, it transitions into something effusive, joyous, full of life and possibility. But in that leap, nothing from the previous half is lost, or forgotten. It all blends together, into an expression of pain, at a lost childhood, of love that went unsaid. And an expression of joy, at the way new families are formed. In the hope for the future. In the faith that, no matter how dark it is today, there’s always the possibility of sun tomorrow.

28. Land of Hope and Dreams – Bruce Springsteen (2012)

You get basically the entire Springsteen mythos here: trains, lost souls, community, redemption, and a killer saxophone solo from the Big Man (one of his very last, sadly). The fact that the mode of reference is almost anachronistic these days (who catches a train to their salvation in 2013?) is actually part of the point. It’s a call to remember what is great in our past, not to say that we can go back, but to caution us about what it means to move forward.

29. I’ve Got Wheels – Miranda Lambert (2016)

In the classic tradition of the American troubadour, Lambert concludes her long journey through the dark night of the soul with a bit of hope. There’s redemption to be found out there somewhere. “Whatever road, however long. I’ve got wheels. I’m rolling on.”

30. World Tour (Weezy, Wale, Dre) – Brenton Duvall (2011)

Picks out the chorus of Wale’s World Tour, and supplements it with lines from Lil’ Wayne and Forgot About Dre, placing each of them against a shimmering, beautiful, insistent background of electronica. The resulting creation sounds totally distinct and organic – it’s almost impossible to recall the individual components in their original form. The Dre part, in particular, is utterly different. What came off as aggressive and petulant when backed by Eminem now sounds strangely humble, even hopeful.

31. Capricornia – Allo Darlin’ (2012)

One of the finest jangle pop songs ever recorded, and possibly the best advertisement for visiting Australia I’ve ever heard.

32. Right Direction – The Dirty Diamonds (2010)

Great harmonies, an awesome underlying beat, a call and response bit at the end that’s just gleefully self-aware (“when I say Dirty, you say Diamonds”). It’s everything I love about 60s doo-wop acts combined with everything I love about electro dance pop. And it’s a right good time. If Right Direction doesn’t get you excited about life, then pretty much nothing will.

33. Red Eyes – The War On Drugs (2014)

I could listen to this song for months on repeat and never get tired of it. It’s so dense, a concentrated burst of rock and roll, full of passion and pathos and glorious rollicking energy. And when the full band returns at 3:35…you get one of the best musical moments of the whole decade. It gives me shivers.

34. The Opener – CAMP COPE (2018)

Equal parts rage and joy. Rage at a world of blatant injustice, filled with men who are utterly incapable of grasping the privileges they wield. But also joy at the sheer audacity of creation and the righteous noise they can make. It would be a great song for any era, but feels absolutely essential for the latter years of this decade.

35. Boom Clap – Charli XCX (2014)

A strong competitor for best chorus of the decade, with bonus points for its onomatopoeiatical effect.

36. Prodigal Dog – Hilary Woods (2018)

It seems insufficient to describe this song as haunting. It weaves itself around you, whispering promises of a world beyond our own. And if you tilt your head just right, you can almost see the veil between realities shimmering in the light. What lies on the other side? Do we dare to step across? That way lies madness…but also maybe redemption?

37. State Hospital – Frightened Rabbit (2012)

A picture of damage and loss, held at a distance. A life lived with little attention or care from those around. And the tiny threads of hope that allow you to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The possibility that someone might be waiting around the next corner to make it all seem worthwhile.

38. Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt – Kate Nash (2010)

This song build and builds, from something tiny and pure all the way up to a mad rant. And each move along the path is perfectly executed. To me, it hinges on the section just as the tide is turning, a little under three minutes in, when she whispers “listen” and the notes that follow are so piercingly clear. It’s when you begin to sense that something truly stunning is about to take place. And oh my does she deliver on that promise.

39. Sad Girls Club – Katie Ellen (2017)

It walks the knife’s edge between exuberance and depression with incredible poise. It seethes with anger, but cut sharply by an unshakeable sense of compassion. It’s a hymn for those who have been told to hide their pain and put on a happy face. For those who can no longer bear to maintain the illusion. And it absolutely slays.

40. Hope U Had Phun! – The Dirty Diamonds (2010)

It jumps right on top of you from the first note, wrapping you up in the most brilliantly orchestrated piece of New Wave, lo-fi, in your face girl-pop. This one of the most joyous songs of the decade, made all the better because I still can’t really understand why it works so well.

41. In Reverse – The War On Drugs (2014)

The emotional core of one of the best albums of the decade, this song resolves–or at least provides closure on–many of the themes that define the record: loss, separation, and depression. It opens with a long, slow wash. After several minutes, Granduciel enters the soundscape, sounding weary but still somehow hopeful. Then, halfway through, the song fully unfurls and it’s a genuinely cathartic moment of release.

42. Into You – Ariana Grande (2016)

An all-time great pop song. Her voice is sultry but pure. The beat insistent. The songwriting immaculate. And when she sings “I’m so into you,” taking a journey across several octaves in the process, your heart melts to a little puddle on the floor.

43. True Love and a Free Life of Free Will – Japandroids (2017)

Probably my favorite drumming of the decade, not for its complexity but for its brutal, glorious simplicity. It’s a simple round on repeat, but it gets inside of you and relentlessly builds until you feel like the whole world will blow to pieces.

44. Cotton Skies – Westkust (2019)

Roll down the windows and let this one blast out at full volume. Ride the storm until it lifts you straight up into heaven. This song rips. There’s really no other way to put it.

45. The Face of God – Camp Cope (2018)

I think a lot these days about just how much we ask of those who have been victimized. How little we are willing to listen. How certain we are that they must by lying, because we’re terrified to acknowledge just how normal this all is. It fills me with rage, and with an unspeakable sadness, a longing for the world to be as gentle and as kind as my heart insists that it should be.

46. In Heaven – Japanese Breakfast (2016)

It shimmers in the dark, like a distant city skyline on a cold November night. Then she starts singing and your breath catches in your throat, the way it does when someone’s about to tell you bad news and is just shuffling around, looking for the right words. But just as the bleakness threatens to overwhelm, she unleashes a chorus – so pure, so heartbreakingly sad, so beautiful – and the whole world shifts under your feet.

47. Troublemaker – Camera Obscura (2013)

So much to love about this song. The bridge is amazing – and the way it leads back into the fadeout is a wonderfully sustained interplay of harmonies and guitar. But ultimately I’m drawn back to the ringing guitar line that frames the song, and to Tracyanne Campbell’s glorious delivery.

48. Blank Space – Taylor Swift (2014)

It strikes the perfect balance between genuine non-ironic commitment to the premise and a slouching meta-commentary on what it’s like to be the biggest pop star in the world. The cleverness of the lyric is wonderfully counterpointed by a soaring vocal performance that makes a relatively compressed audio range feel incredibly expansive.

49. Always Gold – Radical Face (2011)

The opening verse to this song is one of my favorite musical moments of the decade. It is simple, beautiful, and aches all the way down to the marrow. It tells more in a few lines than most novels can mange. The plaintiveness of his voice is pitch-perfect, communicating a sort of triumphant resignation.

50. No More Shelter – Joan Shelley (2015)

Maybe the closest thing this world will ever come to a perfect hymn.

Honorable Mentions:
San Francisco (Little Daylight Remix) – The Mowgli’s (2013)
Words – Outer Spaces (2016)
One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend) – Wilco (2011)
Song For Zula – Phosphorescent (2013)
Green Light – Lorde (2017)
It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy – Passion Pit (2012)
So Here We Are – Gordi (2016)
New Lover – Josh Ritter (2013)
Troublemaker, Doppelganger – Lucy Dacus (2016)
Dancing on My Own – Robyn (2010)

2018 has been a year of reckoning. A year for asking questions. A year for insisting on getting answers. A year of rage. Of deep, soul-destroying sadness, of hopelessness and loss. A year for those who have power and privilege to finally start to think seriously about what it means for those without. But also a year for those who have been victimized to reassert their agency, to define new roles and new possibilities.

This was all there in the music, of course. As is always the case, art follows life. Or maybe life follows art. Either way, all the best music these days is being made by women, by people of color, by queer folks and nonbinary folks. You’ll still find a couple white dudes with guitars on this list, but not many. The world of popular music is more diverse than its ever been, and is far better because of it.

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.

30. Mogwai – Kin

Mogwai records fall in a pretty narrow band for me. I always enjoy them, but never regard them as truly essential. And Kin is just about the median Mogwai record. That doesn’t mean its boring. Just that it is exactly as good as I expected it would be. Its most immediately striking songs are the louder and more aggressive ones.  Flee sounds like a shootout in an industrial factory, for example, while Donuts conveys the sense of scaling a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. The title track also includes an explosive final movement in which the building tension is unleashed. Still, it’s the restrained and introspective moments that ultimately hit the hardest, with Funeral Pyre a notable case. It’s deeply meditative, with a sliver of menace lurking in the shadows, and probably the most affecting track on the record.

Highlights: Funeral Pyre, Eli’s Theme, Donuts, Miscreants

29. Goalkeeper – Bad Times Don’t Last

You could drop this EP into the middle of a late 90s Gap commercial and no one would blink an eye. I mean that as a compliment, though a slightly guarded one. It’s not much of an innovation on the genre, but so what? There world can always use a little more enthusiastic three-chord punk rock.

Highlights: Sunshine, Chances, Nothing At All

28. Rita Ora – Phoenix

The first six songs would make an absolutely killer EP. Pure pop joy, all wrapped up in about 20 minutes. The back half is arguably more interesting musically, experimenting a bit more with tempo, genre, and emotional stakes. But, to my ears, none of it really sticks the landing. I’ll stick with Side A, and just put it on repeat.

Highlights: Your Song, Anywhere, Only Want You, New Look

27. The Beths – Future Me Hates Me

A timeless power pop record, which is full of hints and references to different eras but which is never beholden to any of them. It simply is what it is: a record full of big, joyous guitar rock. For me, they absolutely scratch the itch that came with the dissolution of Allo Darlin. But you’re welcome to fill in any reference—Big Star, Posies, Gin Blossoms, New Pornographers, Badfinger. It’s all here.

Highlights: Future Me Hates Me, Happy Unhappy, Less Than Thou, Whatever

26. opiou – SYZYGY 01

I have only recently learned about the existence of glitch-hop, and would have a difficult time explaining precisely what that even means. All I can really say is that it’s a serious trip. In terms of ambition and structure, this is more or less a drum and bass record, but there is a whole lot more going on than just that. Ginger Lizard is essentially a classic funk track, with about fifty additional elements layered on top. Botrok is, well, it pretty much sounds like what it says on the tin. And Dalmations is an introspective synth soundscape with some swarming horns. I have to be in the right mood to enjoy this album, but when I am, it’s incandescent.

Highlights: Ginger Lizard, Botrok, Boogie Latch

25. Ogikubo Station – We Can Pretend Like

We often look to popular cultures for heroes, when the real heroes are living far more normal lives. That said, if you wanted to identify a hero within the music business, you could do a lot worse than looking to Mike Park. Imagine a kid in the 80s, inspired by seeing people of color on the stage playing punk music and making people happy. And so he starts a record label, because he wants there to be place in the world for bands to go who aren’t ready to sign their lives over to the responsibilities and limitations of a major label. Over all those years, he continues to run this record label out of his mother’s basement, incubating generation after generation of new bands. And still writing music of his own!

Well, Ogikubo Station is one of Park’s many projects these days. A joint venture with Maura Weaver of Mixtapes, which plays very well on both of their strengths. It’s a relentlessly sweet and joyful record—the product of two people with plenty of experience in making music about how to find hope even in the darkest of times.  The result is wonderfully simple: no frills, no gimmicks, just some pretty songs that hit you hard and then step aside so you can continue with your day.

If you grew up in the last few decades and enjoyed basically any punk or ska music, you’re probably away of Park’s influence, even if you don’t know him directly. If so, go ahead and check out this record—or one of the dozens of other great albums from Asian Man. If we want music to be a place for kids to find a new home, a new community of love and support, this is the kind of thing we really ought to support.

Highlights: I’ve Been Thinking of St. Louis, Rest Before We Go To War, Take a Piece Of All That’s Good, Drowning At The Watering Hole

24. Mimi Page – Dark Before the Dawn EP

I will never not love a record from Mimi Page. She writes the songs that fill the celestial spheres, the places we visit in our dreams. There’s a gentle longing here, and just a hint of darkness. But not the sort of darkness that threatens to overwhelm you. It’s the darkness that comes when you close your eyes and listen for the breath that flows between you and everything else.

Highlights: Cosmic Hymn of Light, Dark Before the Dawn, Flowing

23. Restorations – LP5000

It evokes the punk side of Springsteen, with rich guitar riffs dancing and weaving between machinegun bursts of percussion. You’ll find the same sheen as a War on Drugs record, the same crisp percussion as a National record, and the same clean and dynamic guitar sound you’d expect from Frightened Rabbit. But it’s not just about its references. This is also very much a record about its own space and its own time. A time of great doubt, great pain, and an almost limitless sense of fear about what might come next.

Because the deep truth here is that these songs are absolutely full of pent-up rage, which is tightly coiled, never really finding any sort of release. In many ways, this makes for a frustrating listening experience. There are movements that promise catharsis and refuse to deliver. It’s agonizing. On the other hand, there is a feeling of deep pathos in the performance of these tight circles. To listen is to edge ourselves around the anger, trying to maintain a grip on your sense of self, insisting on a sort of stability in the face of a world that is completely, relentlessly careless.

Highlights: Nonbeliever, The Red Door, St.

22. Dustings – Somatic Alterations

A little bit dream pop, a little bit shoegaze, and a little bit ambient. It’s a time-tested combination, and while Dustings doesn’t add anything particularly new to the equation, that doesn’t make this album any less affecting. This is not a record that reaches out and shakes you by the shoulders demanding your attention. It’s one that sneaks up quietly, nudging its way toward the edge of your consciousness. Pleasant, but elusive. Friendly, but mysterious. An album of small gestures and whispered missives. And while it does let loose more than a few times, the explosion always feels tightly contained–like a tornado that whips through town and destroys one building while leaving the ones on either side completely untouched.

Highlights: Murmured Hymn for Defocused Eyes, Audrey, Peace in Enduring, Delicate Decay

21. Remember Sports – Slow Buzz

Another great band from the booming Philadelphia music scene, Remember Sports offer the sort of hook-heavy, pop-adjacent punk music that has been the hallmark of 20-something post-college types for decades. But they do a damn fine job of it. And there’s a reason this genre has such enduring appeal. It’s a time of major change, with a lot of big questions and fears, but also a lot of hope. The future is still wide open, and there’s something incredibly cathartic about trying to put it all down into song.

Highlights: Up From Below, The 1 Bad Man, Calling Out, Otherwise

20. Zoe Keating – Snowmelt EP

Snowmelt is a case of real truth in advertising. Not since Here Comes the Sun has a record more perfectly expressed the feeling of that springtime thaw: when the air is still fresh and clean, when you step outside and feel the uncontainable joy of the sun on your cheek and the knowledge that a new year stands ahead of you. When you can still believe that this year really will be the one that everything comes together. There’s plenty of reason for fear, plenty of reason for skepticism, plenty of reason to doubt. But Snowmelt is a reminder that there is also always a glimmer of hope, even in the darkest night.

It’s only a short EP, but even over the course of four songs, Keating reminds us of just how much can be accomplished with a cello and a series of tape loops. I can only hope that this is a sign that she’s returned to a world of musical productivity, and will grace us with a full-length soon.

Highlights: They’re all great, but Forte is the centerpiece

19. Hilary Woods – Colt

The opening two are the strongest start to a record in a very, very long time. A full album that kept pace with them wouldn’t just be one of the best of 2018; it would be one of the best ever made. Eerie, haunting, beautiful beyond words. These are the stuff dreams are made of.  And still, even if the rest of the record doesn’t quite match up to the opening, there’s still plenty worth exploring, including the stately Black Rainbow, which feels like an interpellation of the Twin Peaks theme, and the ghostly Kith which would make an excellent addition to the soundtrack for The Mists of Avalon, whenever HBO gets around to turning it into a TV series.

Highlights: Prodigal Dog, Inhaler

18. Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie

Each new Phosphorescent record builds out the atmospherics a bit more than the past. This time around, Matthew Houck has built some truly monumental soundscapes, which feel like they’re unfolding in quite a few more dimensions than just the three we can fully perceive. The stage is held aloft by two supports that bookend the interior songs—wordless jams that end up being some of the most affecting music that Houck has ever created.

But the heart of the record, for better and occasionally for worse, is the middle seven tracks. There’s plenty to love here, though at times you can’t help but wish he might dial everything back one or two degrees so that the underlying themes can reassert themselves. But for the most part, his dusty voice and the delicate application of some pedal steel is enough to keep things on track. And when he does hit the mark, he really nails it. Christmas Down Under is eerie, strange, and extremely compelling. New Birth in New England takes you a jaunty ride through two events: meeting his future wife and the birth of their first child, and the whole thing sounds eerily like a Paul Simon cover.

Highlights: C’est La Vie No.2, Black Waves / Silver Moon, New Birth in New England, Christmas Down Under

17. Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Hopkins is a top-notch sound designer, and he succeeds in building a universe of twisting, turning, glitches and thumping beats. It’s occasionally disconcerting, as notes fail to settle into anticipated grooves, but there’s something deeply satisfying about the disconnect. Your body wants to move, but your mind has trouble following along. In that separation, a kernel of understanding begins to form.

I spent a lot of time with this record over the summer. It was an excellent companion as I was sitting in coffee shops trying to write. I haven’t found myself going back to it much since then, though.  It definitely strikes me as a record that will go through ebbs and lulls. But I look forward to the time when I feel the urge to reach back out and see if it might be possible to touch the sky.

Highlights: Luminous Beings, Everything Connected, Feel First Life, Singularity

16. Hayley Kiyoko – Expectations

The album is called Expectations, because those are precisely what it works so hard to subvert. On first glance, this is a relatively straightforward pop record from a former teen star. But there’s just so much nested within it: big boisterous songs with perfect hooks, slinky vocal lines that dance elusively around you, interludes of dreamlike reverie, funk beats, and on and on. And the expectations game is also a deep part of the record’s self-reflection. Kiyoko, after all, is queer, and has spoken powerfully about the importance of pop culture figures to represent that normality of lesbian identity. Which makes this record is a performative interruption of the expectations of heteronormativity. That’s part of what makes it such an interesting and engaging record, despite its tendency to work within some pretty common (maybe even banal) tropes of pop music. Because the personal is always political, and there’s no way to get around that fact.

Highlights: Under the Blue / Take Me In, He’ll Never Love You, What I Need, Curious

15. Jenn Champion – Single Rider

On her last record, Jenn Champion took a major turn toward the pop aesthetic. The former Carissa’s Wierd singer was never going to fully tidy up the ragged edges, but it was striking how smoothly she was able to slide into a different style. On Single Rider, she continues that evolution, offering what is essentially a pure pop record, though one very much informed by the likes of Erasure or M83. It’s a delightful experience, particularly on the opening two tracks which are cool and pure as a fresh mountain stream. Taken as a whole, the record drags a bit if you go straight through, and could perhaps have used a little bit more diversity in sonic range. The simple piano-balled Bleed, for example, feels like a wonderful breath of air when it pops up toward the end of the record. One or two more departures along those lines might have been enough to turn a lovely record into a true show-stopper.

Highlights: O.M.G. (I’m All Over It), You Knew, Bleed, Never Giving In

14. Grouper – Grid of Points

Like all of Liz Harris’s work, this is a work of distance and separation. Discovering meaning in a Grouper song is never easy; the words are muffled, the emotions concealed. For all its sparseness, there’s a deep guardedness about her music—as if it contains a secret that can only be concealed by laying it in plain sight.

Sometimes that means laying a simple melody out, and then playing with its sonic textures to create a sense of unquiet tension. But here, the elusiveness relies on no production elements. These songs are stripped completely bare. It’s simply her and a piano, playing in what sounds like it might be a distant forest clearing. In a pitch-dark night, hundreds of miles removed from civilization, she whispers truths so profound that words cannot possibly contain them. But it’s not important to understand. It’s only important to feel it all wash over you.

Highlights: Driving, Thanksgiving Song, Blouse, Parking Lot

13. Nicki Minaj – Queen

An album that could have used some heavy editing, but which still contains enough pieces of genius to deserve serious attention. Because at the end of the day, Minaj is an exciting artist precisely because she’s willing to take on so many roles, so many perspectives, so many chances. And if the final product is a little overstuffed, it just means every listener is free to construct their own 11 track ‘just the good bits’ version of Queen. For me, that means shying away from a lot of the processed pop stuff, which mostly falls pretty flat to my ears. But my condensed Queen is filled with gems, starting with the opener Ganja Burn – the chillest diss track I’ve heard in a long time – and the gloriously meta Barbie Dreams. The middle is held up by the beautiful Bed, a collaboration with Ariana Grande, the strutting Chun-Li and the compact aggression of Good Form. And it’s all brought together at the end by the blissed out breakup anthem of Nip Tuck and the I’ll-see-my-way-out torch song Come See About Me.

Highlights: Ganja Burn, Nip Tuck, Barbie Dreams, Bed

12. Beach House – 7

Much darker – both in terms of themes and sound – than much of their previous work, 7 feels like an appropriate response to a world that increasingly feels like it’s spinning out of control. This is still very clearly a Beach House record, with their classic sepia-tinged production and Victoria Legrand’s unmistakable voice, but they’re working with a bigger sonic palette. It doesn’t always work—the overlay of choral arrangements and a ticky-tacky percussion in L’Inconnue strikes me as particularly rough—but even on the tracks I don’t quite love, I appreciate the care that went into it. And there are plenty of major successes: the shoegazy propulsiveness of Dark Spring, the way Girl of the Year blends girl group pop of the 60s with a production style right of a Phil Collins record, the rich warmth of the guitar on Pay No Mind.

Highlights: Dark Spring, Last Ride, Girl of the Year, Pay No Mind

11. First Aid Kit – Ruins

The next time this band releases a bad song, it will be the first time. Ruins feels a bit less cohesive than their last album, while also lacking the precocious, jaw-dropping adventurousness of The Lion’s Roar. Still, a modest slump for the Sisters Söderberg is good enough that it would constitute a crowning achievement for virtually anyone else. As always, the harmonies are impossibly pure. But this time around they worked with Tucker Martine, and you can sense his hand in the production: which is cleaner than their past work, with a bit more fluidity in the melding of classic folk and jangle-rock. I don’t know that I’d want them to keep working with Martine, but for this specific record, I think his touch works well.

Because ultimately, this record feels heavier than their other work. And I think that’s intentional. It’s a record about the experience of achieving success beyond your wildest dreams, and what it means to still find a way to move forward. It’s also a breakup record, in the classic sense. And that’s the delicate balance struck across many of the songs here—how to re-learn what it means to be you, when for so long your identity has been wrapped up in other things. In another person, in your desire to achieve success. When it’s all laid bare, what remains, and what does it all mean?

Highlights: It’s A Shame, My Wild Sweet Love, Rebel Heart, Nothing Has to Be True

10. Benoît Pioulard – May / Deck Amber (with Ant’lrd)

I’m cheating a bit here, combining two releases from one of my favorite ambient artists. May is the real star here, for all that it’s only four songs long. But contained within those bare twenty minutes is the sound of galaxies forming, of planets coalescing, of plate tectonics. You feel the weight of time, which stretches far beyond any possibility of comprehension. And yet here, on a blue-green planet lost in the vastness of space, we exist. And if we will never truly comprehend the meaning of distance, perhaps we can still find some peace.

I’ve also included Deck Amber, a collaboration with Portland-based Ant’lrd, which strikes many of the same themes, but which feels a bit more grounded. If May feels like the sound of the entire universe breathing, Deck Amber offers the perspective of someone looking out upon that vast space, watching…and wondering.

Highlights: Moss Detail, Sixth Hour Bloom, Vacant, Docene

9. Rosanne Cash – She Remembers Everything

At some point we’ll run out of superlatives to describe Rosanne Cash, who just keeps putting out fantastic albums, forty years after her first release. This is a darker record than her other recent efforts—both in theme and in production. And that’s saying something, given that she has most recently been struggling with death, and with the legacy of southern identity. But by turning her attention to a narrower range of questions—what it means to continue living, what it means to feel the past slipping away.

There’s nothing showy here. Unlike the last record—which felt to me like an elaborate set built to give proper context to When the Master Calls the Roll—this time Cash is playing everything tight to the vest. Each song offers a glimpse of the truth, but there is no master key. Much like life itself, where the best we can do is take the next step ahead of us, and hope that each day will bring some new wisdom. And maybe, if we’re truly lucky, a sense of belonging.

Highlights: The Parting Glass, Everyone But Me, The Only Thing Worth Fighting For, The Undiscovered Country

8. Hammock – Universalis

Hammock are one of the surest bets in ambient/post-rock music. Every record is good, and each is distinct, though still notably a product of the same artist. I think Universalis is their best work yet. It was only released in the last few days, so I haven’t had enough time to truly dwell with it, but it strikes me as the final synthesis of a decade spent exploring different ways to evoke feelings of loss and belonging. It has the same sparseness of their early work, while also drawing in the warm melodies of their later work. Listening to Universalis is like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket while you stare out the window of a spaceship and watch the sun slowly turn from a glowing orb the dominates the sky into a tiny glimmer of light—just one more star among the vast array of the sky.

Highlights: Scattering Light, Clothed with Sky, Thirst, Universalis, Tremendum

7. Vanessa Peters – Foxhole Prayers

An important record from one of my favorite artists. The melodies are top-notch and the production is high-quality. And the songwriting is amazingly deft. Peters is able to argue without ever coming across as didactic or judgmental. The music is driven sense of dread at the conditions of our world, but also infused with a deep and generous hope. It’s a record that challenges us to stop being careless: to do something, no matter how small, to make the world a kinder place.

All of which is to say: this is a powerfully topical record, one very much centered in 2018. But it’s also a timeless record. Because time is a great wheel and there’s nothing truly new under the sun. So if we want to understand why there is so much pain, we have to look inside, to seek out those parts of ourselves that we keep hidden for fear of what they might reveal. The dark parts, where fear dominates and suspicion reigns. But also the parts that remain hidden because we’ve never truly needed. Reservoirs of hope, compassion, faith, and resolve. We run from all of these pieces, both the dark and the light, because life is so much simpler without them. But in the end, she says in the final track, we are all “what we can’t outrun.” For good and for bad.

This is a dark record, but it’s not a cynical one. Nor is it joyless. It asks big, important questions, but does so with an incredible generosity, and playfulness. It’s a room with a fire and a warm meal for a weary traveler on the road. An offer to listen, in a world full of people all too ready to talk. A restless spirit pacing long into the night. And a challenge to all of us to remember: those who are careless with the hearts of others will often find great success, but they will rarely find satisfaction.

Highlights: Fight, What You Can’t Outrun, Carnival Barker, Just One of Them

6. Snail Mail – Lush

Rock is generally a young person’s game. It takes a certain breathlessness to fully commit to the premise, something that is generally sanded away with time, as life grows more complex, as tensions reveal themselves and gray spaces take over your perception. And still, it’s always shocking when something this good comes from someone this young. At just 18 years old, Lindsey Jordan is living in two worlds. Her songs are immaculately produced—every note is precisely drawn, every beat hits right. But it still has that reckless need of someone with a million things to say, who simply can’t wait for it all to fall into place.

Listening to it the first time through, you’re tempted to categorize it as emo. Certainly it’s implied in the vocal range, which conveys that sense of desperation—the need to find some way of communicating a sense of emotional fragility that could never be contained by simple words on a page. But the more you dig in, the less appropriate that characterization feels. Because at the core, this isn’t a record about getting lost in emotions; it’s a record about precisely documenting them. The driving force here is the limitation of memory, which is always incomplete and often simply false. And so you record the pain, the longing, the false starts and broken promises. Not because you expect it to be a perfect accounting, but because it’s the only way to generate even a little bit of distance.

The result is an album steeped in irony, but all the more filled with pathos because of it. A series of vignettes in which a young woman stares at herself through the camera, picks apart her motives, poses questions, lobs accusations. All in the service of coming to terms with what it means to simply be in a world that seems so inhospitable.

Highlights: Full Control, Pristine, Heat Wave, Stick

5. Pistol Annies – Interstate Gospel

A delightful record, from three titans of the Americana scene: Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley. 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.

But 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.”

There are two columns, which provide the emotional core of the album. First: When I Was His Wife, where they each take a crack at the ways love convinces us to pull the wool over our eyes, and which closes with some of the loveliest “ooooh, ooooohs” you’ll ever hear. Second: Milkman, which forgoes any sort of archness and simply tells a desperately sad story of a daughter trying to see the world through her mother’s eyes.

Highlights: When I Was His Wife, Best Years of My Life, Milkman, Cheyenne, Masterpiece, Commissary

4. Alkaline Trio – Is This Thing Cursed?

The trio bring all the propulsive energy of their early work, without ever sounding like a mere throwback. The melodies are great, the songwriting is top notch, and while it doesn’t have quite the same degree of untrammeled audacity as the songs they were writing in their early 20s – how could it? – it more than makes up the difference with a healthy dose of wisdom. More than anything else, it feels necessary in a way that nothing from this band has ever quite achieved. There’s an emotional heft here, a weightiness of spirit and subject, keenly balanced against the raucous energy of the music.

It’s a heavy album in many ways – dealing with subjects like depression and self-destruction (both personal and political) – but also a joyous one. A record which knows that music can’t release us from the pain that plagues us, but can help keep us afloat while we work on that slow process of self-healing. “I know you’re hurting,” it says. “I’m hurting too. But let’s sing together tonight anyway.”

Highlights: Demon and Division, Heart Attacks, Sweet Vampires, Goodbye Fire Island, Blackbird

3. Now, Now – Saved

When I heard SGL last year, it immediately pierced my heart, and I couldn’t wait to hear what else this band would offer on a full-length. Once it arrived, I was not disappointed. For a pure pop album, the pace is generally pretty stately. So don’t come here looking for bangers. But do come for light stutter-step delivery and the glorious feeling of the sky opening up above while a thousand stars fall all around you. I try to resist the temptation to overuse the word ‘glimmering’ to describe this sort of music, but I just can’t help myself in this case. If ever there was a perfect record to soundtrack a montage of a young couple falling in love, it’s this. Picture them holding hands as they run down the street together, kissing for the first time as the bright lights swirl around them, falling into bed together as the entire world fades away to be replaced by the sense of two bodies moving together.

Highlights: SGL, Set It Free, MJ, Yours, Powder

2. Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour

Kacey Musgraves has done here what very few artists successfully manage: a career pivot toward gentle reflection without the slightest hint of the blandness that such a move so often brings. This record is light as air, soft as velvet, and deceptively simple.  The songs wash over you, cool to the touch like ocean waves on a hot summer day. It all feels so effortless that it takes more than a few listens to realize just how perfectly constructed these songs are. Just how precisely Musgraves is deploying her vocal talents to hit precisely the desired note. Just how well orchestrated every movement is.

This is a record with no life-changing things to say, no grand pronouncements on offer, and no major innovations in sound or texture. But for all that, it feels like a revelation. Particularly in the second half, which is defined by an almost preternatural sense of balance between emotional vulnerability and arch distance.

There’s no single song here that winds up and delivers the sort of punch as her earlier highlights. But that never feels like an absence. It’s a steadier record, one that reflects a greater sense of maturity, emotional confidence, and exercise of restraint.

It’s not quite a masterpiece (though I do think Musgraves has an all-time great in her future at some point), but it rather pointedly isn’t trying to be one. It’s simply a document of what it means to give up on trying to understand, categorize, and reflect on every failure.. And then to simply let yourself be, warts and all.

Highlights: Rainbow, Velvet Elvis, Space Cowboy, High Horse, Wonder Woman

1. CAMP COPE – How to Socialise & Make Friends

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.

I found myself coming back over and over to The Face of God this fall as I watched the Supreme Court confirmation process…thinking of just how much we ask of those who have been victimized. How little we are willing to listen. How certain we are that they must by lying. It fills me with rage, and with an unspeakable sadness, a longing for the world to be as gentle and as kind as my heart insists that it should be.

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.

Highlights: The Opener, The Face of God, How to Socialise & Make Friends, UFO Lighter, I’ve Got You