My Top Albums of the 2010s

Presented in alphabetical order:

Ariel Pink and The Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

What I said then--

What a weird album! Why do I like this so much? At some point during my first listen through Pet Sounds, I remember thinking that I was experiencing timeless music. A scroll written in a strange yet familiar language was unrolled, explaining all the music that I had enjoyed and thereafter was to yet. The language of pop, or, a history and future of Aaron's liking music by The Beach Boys, it was called. Before Today isn't nearly as monumental, but it was a similar experience. Before Today is ultimately a pop album masked in its diverse draw of influences and styles. As some sort of artifact containing the last four decades of pop music, the album sounds at times like a corroded, thirty year-old battery which, having been exposed to the elements, has become a jumbled timeline. Some moments surface from the past; others point toward the future. The corrosion damage is ascertainable: fuzzy production, singers unconcerned with intelligibly pronouncing all lyrics, songs veering in unexpected directions, and the foolishness of the word "genre" to define the wash of sounds. The pop instruction manual checked out this morning. This oddball world that Ariel Pink has put to tape, replete with unpolished gems, centers on "Round and Round," a song that works as a kind of collage of all musical styles represented on the album. It's indescribable for me in terms of sound, so i can only praise as wonderful these partially decomposed songs whose pop souls show through the virtual decades of dust. I hear Stevie Wonder, Bowie and Talking Heads to name a few. Hear the past, hear the future. Hm!

What I say now--

What I weird album! I love it so much. No two songs are alike. No two songs are normal. It's a funhouse around whose corners lurk the spooky ("Fright Night"), kooky ("L'estat"), and unusual ("Menopause Man"), but it's all in fun and if you go in expecting some serious art you've got the wrong mindset to appreciate the sappy crooner "Can't Hear My Eyes" not to mention the Bowie-esque "Butt-hole Blondies". There is one song that demands we take it seriously, however, as "Round and Round" is an all-decade single. It's a one-off encapsulation of the weird world of this album, complete with found-sound tape whistles, decayed group vocals offering call/response to each other, and that boot-kick chorus. Nothing felt as wild, weird, and free as this album.

Caribou – Swim

What I said then--

I recognize that I am predisposed to love Dan Snaith's (aka Caribou) music. Ever since 2003's Up in Flames made me weak in the knees (read: ears), I've anticipated and mostly cherished each release since as if it were nectar from the gods. Swim threw me for a bit of a loop, though. I didn't anticipate the mutation of Snaith's song sense toward a dance-ier, more angular direction as in tunes like "Found out" and "Sun." What I've enjoyed so much about past Caribou albums is the saturation of melody. Songs like "Desiree" or the more psychedelic "Hendrix with KO" pushed the melodic elements to their limits. Restraint, or, perhaps more precisely, standoffishness, did not appear much in Snaith's repertoire before. Upon hearing the first single, "Odessa," I was skeptical about an entire album of this "watery dance music" (as Snaith has aptly called it). Later, after several listens through, I found that the more economical sound of the dance-ier tracks like "Sun," "Leave House," and "Odessa" left room for the more melodic-leaning tracks to stand out. "Kaili" swirls colorfully, growing and retreating, dancing between the ears, yet always spinning away. Listening to the "chorus" in headphones is an out-of-body experience, and the entrance of the saxophone near the end does inexplicable things to my body: I twitch, I shake my head, I squirm, I breath deeper... exhaling now - anything to FEEL all of this song. It may be my favorite song of the year. My hair stands on end; chills spring up and down my spine. "Lalibela" meditates further on "Kaili"s excellent melody. "Jamelia" reaches similar heights, climbing upward, surging chaotically before suddenly receeding. I cannot explain my connection to Snaith's music, but it almost always makes sense to my ears. It gets me, and I it.

What I say now--

Swim plays to many of my soft spots: it's warm, melodic, and poppy. It also opens some new doors for me: at times it's house dance music. Dan Snaith further tested my comfort zone with dance/house on 2014's Our Love, but Swim was the sweet spot of his drift between pure melody and beat-heavy house textures. The standout remains "Kaili"--a laser show of darting melodic lines that coalesce in an unrelenting spiral of vertiginous melody (that manages to squeeze in a bass clarinet and saxophone for kicks).

Carly Rae Jepsen – Emotion

What I said then--

Yes, I am going for absolute incongruity with this album following Viet Cong. But it so happens that I also have a place in my heart for laser-guided radio pop. CRJ (yup) was written off as a one-hit wonder by probably every person with ears in 2012 after "Call Me Maybe," but she returned with an actually phenomenal stack of glitter-glazed pop songs. I found that once I let myself decide it was just fine and not wrong to love this, I loved this. That moment happened between the first mouse click on "I Really Like You" and the song's chorus. In those 30 seconds I realized again that the modern pop music machine can make just as many diamonds (hi, Britney) as lumps of coal (hi, Fergie), and so can Carly. Hear "Run Away With Me".

What I say now--

This year, I flew to LA for the most fun concert weekend I've had in 10-12 years with three dude-friends who share an abiding love for the 80s-glazed pop found here. We rode gleefully on mini scooters all over the place and blasted this album the whole time. Decade-defining.

Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

What I said then--

Fiona apple-y.

What I say now--

I haven't revisited this album much in the 7 years since I visited this album weekly, but what I immediately remember is the outstanding power of Fiona's poetic imagery. If she puts out an album a decade, she crams it full of more brilliance than most folks manage in several takes over 10 years. Literally any song I could mention is loaded with turns of phrase worthy of an anthology all this album's own. Here she's got her little fist tugging on his forest chest. There she's likening you to a werewolf the way you left her for dead...and in the next phrase admitting to have provided your full moon. Over here she's woven a tapestry of a surreal self-portrait of anxiety in "Every Single Night". Finally, she's a hot knife to his butter. Take another decade if you need to, Fiona.

Frank Ocean - Blonde

What I said then--

Nothing. I didn't write for my 2016 list. : (

What I say now--

The growers get you in the end. Early on, I pegged Blonde as less overt and therefore less interesting than 2010's Channel Orange, but the truth was germinating slowly for me as each new listen revealed more depth of song craft and vision. Frank was the visionary, after all, I was just the dummy gifted enough chances to let genius win me over. The enduring image of this album is, for me, "White Ferrari" and the portrait of fragile, unspoken gay manhood it captures. In perhaps a prequel to 2010s "Bad Religion", this time we see Frank choking up at the words he most wants to deliver to a possible lover, and so smoking dope wiles away another afternoon with speculation about alternate dimensions instead of interior confessions. After all, vroom vroom is what real men do, right?

Hot Chip – One Life Stand

What I said then--

I just said to myself: "I feel so warm when I hear this album." Wait, isn't this dance music? I have no idea. In my musical ignorance or inexperience, I've found this kind of music (dance? I'm not sure yet) to be alienating, often too distant in its precision to affect. So 2010 has shown me through a couple albums on this list that this music can have power over more than my spinal cord and hips. Where One Life Stand succeeds for me is in the welcome mat of hooks that unfold slowly, or spring from nowhere as if from a pop-up book. "Hand Me Down Your Love" throws jerky jabs for 1.5 minutes, and right as I'm reaching to skip tracks the tender, melodic heart of the song is revealed. The strings reach in and stretch our chests open wide. The title track is similarly standoffish until the two-minute mark when the song's bouncy lurch is replaced with sweet sentiments and molasses-thick melody. Stretch it over your toes when it gets cold. "Brothers" is also a standout and personal favorite for its heartfelt tribute to brotherly love. The song's mild verses are, once again, shot through as the song accelerates, but the sentiment grows softer, more human. It's a shift that knocks me off my feet even though I know it's coming. If there is an album this year that I would say reminded me how carefully to treat songs, it's this one. One Life Stand knows when to let them smolder, when to let them grow, and when to flip them on their heads. The dynamic of cold giving way to warm and vice versa is what has kept this album so fresh all year. It's season-less, or, maybe more appropriately, season-full, and the seasons of life from my 2010 have only proved its breadth.

What I say now--

It's equally true of the breadth of this decade and how consistently I've enjoyed One Life Stand.

Katie von Schleicher – Shitty Hits

What I said then--

I had zero expectations when I put this album on one evening while cooking dinner. The first few songs breezed by during my initial prep. Then, as I was cutting some carrots, a flutter of saxophone at the end of the 4th track ("Soon") knifed through my wandering mind. Three seconds so delicately treated and unexpected that I rushed over to the phone with a shudder, asking "Did I just hear that??" to an empty room. It was the first of many aha moments on Shitty Hits. The songs, guys! They're packed with little pop delights--and not the kind that wear out quickly. The Beatles spring to mind a dozen times. Yeah, I mean it. I've listened to it more than any other this year.

What I say now--

Katie played the best show I saw this year. The songs did live what they do on tape--buzz, jitter, and croon with pop songwriting excellence. This is my most listened-to album of the last 3 years.

Fang Island - Fang Island

What I said then--

"Fun" is not a word I have ever associated with shredding prog-metal bands, but there's no mistaking the significance of the distant snapcrackling of fireworks as the album begins: Fang Island are here to celebrate. Fang Island have described their music as "everyone high-fiving everyone." Pick any song here, and you'll listen to a moment or two that made me jump off my couch, whip my air guitar around my back, catch that air guitar and go down on my knees in total RAWK OUT MODE. It's an instinctual reaction. This album was made for guitar hero; it makes you feel like a rock star. I tried to control this response, but no: traveling with the fam in the car during the holidays did not stop Fang Island from sending my entire body into rock out mode alone in the back seat. Yes, I am 28. Yes, my parents asked what was going on, but I don't think the metal fists I showed them really said much. You try listening to this circus of high-flying guitar shredding, death-defying drumming and lion-taming jams. It's not hard to imagine the band smiling their way through all ten tracks. The only speed they know is EPIC-speed. Tenacious D must love these guys. Let there be rock.

What I say now--

I am a guitar god when I hear Fang Island. I am also an individual having more fun than I have ever had in my life. 

Women – Public Strain

What I said then--

OOPS! I put a song from this album in my not-top-10 list! I know. That was before Women completely took over my iPod, car stereo, computer and the musical part of my brain. You must blame them for this! The first time I listened, I thought, "I loved one song (see previous post) and was bored by the rest." I heard a voice saying, "Give it some time, Aaron!!" "...OK VOICE!" I said. And, then, two weeks later: "Good GOSH, thank you, voice!!!" The thing is, I dont' think my first impressions were all that off; there isn't a lot to grab your attention here, honestly. But slowly, surely and unintentionally, I started to hear things I liked - no, wait... - loved. First of all, I hear so many other artists I love throughout this album: Sonic Youth ("Drag Open"), Embryonic-era Flaming Lips ("China Steps"), Strokes ("Locust Valley"), Velvet Underground ("Narrow with the Hall"), and Television (all over). But Women hold it together and are able to forge their own sound from these parts. The guitar interplay is one of my favorite parts, as the crunchy hooks seem to surface form nowhere. In much the same way, melody bubbles up somehow from the seeming a-melodic, and the atonal reveals its tonality. Much like the album cover, it's a blurry, dizzying blitz of noise, but there's still living breathing people behind it all if you care to pick them out.

What I say now--

Public Strain is what the kind of record that when given time to grow will sink itself frighteningly deep into your psyche. I still marvel at how GOOD this record is for how little often feels like is going on. In a way, it's in my decade list out of respect--no one album on this list is as pop-less as this, and yet it won me over completely. In spite of its cold exterior, I genuinely identify this album with personal warmth.

Viet Cong – Viet Cong

What I said then--

I had guarded hopes that this album would be the overwhelmingly destructive force of post-rock that I expected. This is what Viet Cong gave us. I've long saved a place in my heart for politically charged agro/math rock catharses (what the hell does that mean? idk, it's the best I could do). Bands like Frodus, Sleater-Kinney, and Women have filled me with happiness for their embodiment of anger and alienation. Maybe it's the junior high boy in me that just wants to thrash around and have it feel like a personal purification by fire. Viet Cong is composed of ex-Women members and amazingly released an album that challenges their former band's towering 2010 album Public Strain. I listen to Public Strain all the time. I listened to Viet Cong all the time. It came out in January, 2015, and I'm sure I listened to it several times each month. It is probably my favorite album I heard this year and also probably the album that will least likely be enjoyed by anyone I know. It's grey, brooding, and ends on a pummeling, 11-minute exclamation point called "Death". What's not to love? Listen to "Continental Shelf" for the most accessible introduction.

What I say now--

I've seen these guys live every chance I've gotten in the last 4 years (3 times, including after their renaming as Preoccupations). I remember the first time I walked up to Matt Flegel, leader singer/bassist, and looked at him severely, saying "This is so. good." while clutching the album. He laughed endearingly, "Wow. Thanks, man!". This album has seen me through many highs and lows in my time in Seattle. Every chance I take to hear it is an exfoliation of the mind, leaving me sharper, purer, and more ragged. I recall Agent Cooper's famous description of his sinister nemesis Windom Earle: "His mind is like a diamond--it's cold, and hard, and brilliant."